


The Mixtape: Halloween Remix Edition

by Calebski



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Azkaban, F/M, Ghosts, Haunting, One Shot Collection, Post-Hogwarts, Spooky, Stalking, Time Travel, Vampires, Wolf!Mates, things that go bump in the night - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:21:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25920493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calebski/pseuds/Calebski
Summary: A Halloween inspired collection of song prompted one-shots, featuring Deathmione pairings.
Relationships: Antonin Dolohov/Hermione Granger, Avery Jr./Hermione Granger, Bartemius Crouch Jr./Hermione Granger, Hermione Granger/Corban Yaxley, Hermione Granger/Fenrir Greyback, Hermione Granger/Mulciber, Hermione Granger/Tom Riddle, Hermione Granger/Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Regulus Black/Hermione Granger
Comments: 94
Kudos: 182
Collections: Hermione's Secret Stash





	1. TRACK 1: Heathens

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Originally posted on FF, this fic has been cleaned up and re-edited for posting here. In celebration of - and hopefully, in time for - Halloween, there will also be another couple of one-shots of Death Eater x Hermione spooky fun!
> 
> This one-shot inspired a multi-chapter fic of the same name which is already up on AO3 and FF. I hope you enjoy x

Track Listings:  
**Track 1: Heathens** / Twenty One Pilots [2016] (Hermione Granger x Evander Avery (Avery Jr))  
 **Track 2: Lullaby** / The Cure [1989] (Hermione Granger x Reuben Yaxley (Yaxley))  
 **Track 3: Monster** / Kanye ft. Jay-Z, Rick Ross & Nicki Minaj [2010] (Hermione Granger x Fenrir Greyback)  
 **Track 4: Every Breath You Take** / The Police [1983] (Hermione Granger x Antonin Dolohov)  
 **Track 5: Abracadabra** / Steve Miller Band [1982] (Hermione Granger x Felix Mulciber (Mulciber))  
 **Track 6: I Put a Spell on You** / Annie Lennox Version [2014] (Hermione Granger x Tom Riddle)  
 **BONUS TRACK: Closer** / Kings of Leon [2008] (Hermione Granger x Regulus Black)  
 **BONUS TRACK: Haunted** / Beyonce [2013] (Barty Crouch Jr x Hermione Granger)  
 **BONUS TRACK: TBC** / TBC [TBC] (TBC x Hermione Granger)

* * *

**TRACK 1**

[Hermione Granger x Evander Avery (Avery Jr)]

 _We don’t deal with outsiders very well  
_ _They say newcomers have a certain smell  
_ _Yeah, trust issues, not to mention  
_ _They say they can smell your intentions_

_/_

_All my friends are heathens, take it slow  
_ _Wait for them to ask you who you know  
_ _Please don’t make any sudden moves  
_ _You don’t know the half of the abuse_

Heathens / Twenty One Pilots [2016]

* * *

Hermione’s head tilted back as she stared up at the imposing grey prism that dominated the bleak skyline. The raging wind lashed against her thin robes. The unending gusts were easily finding their way through fabric to nip at her skin. 

She felt nothing.

She was numb, physically, mentally and emotionally. She was _existing_ now, alive but no longer present. Hermione felt like she was in suspended animation, held in a blank state while she waited for the reality of the last few months to hit. Sometimes she wondered if it ever would. Sometimes she wondered if that would be the moment that finally broke her.

Pulled from her quiet observations of the desolate landscape by an aggressive tug on her arm, Hermione immediately moved in compliance with the guards shepherding, without question or hesitation. There was no delaying the inevitable. 

She had changed over the last few months. No one would have recognised _this_ Hermione Granger. She had seen it on their faces, the surprise that she did not fight back. She had no angry words of protest. There was simply no fight left in her. Compliance did not help the treatment she received, but she obeyed all the same. There was no sense in dawdling. There was no procrastination time left for her. 

Hermione hadn’t been sure what to expect from the inside of the prison walls, but somehow what she found was worse than she had envisioned. The muted greyness that had swamped her vision on the outside of the rock was magnified here. It was darker than she could ever have imagined and colder, so much colder. She had barely made it over the threshold before she could swear she sensed the ingrained damp from the floors running unhindered up her legs.

The sober man at her side directed her, roughly, to a desk just inside the entry, manned by a woman with a mean-looking face and flaxen hair that was pulled into a severe, high ponytail. She regarded Hermione with a slight quirk of her lips that didn’t meet her hard eyes. The guard gave her name to the witch, unnecessarily, _everyone knew who she was_. 

Idly, Hermione realised that this man hadn’t guarded her before. Though she hadn’t looked up to see his face, the realisation came from his uttering of the first words he had spoken since collecting her. He spat her name as if he disliked the taste of it. Each syllable dripped with accusation and scorn, and the hostile witch smiled wider.

Hermione was ushered behind a curtain to her right, where thin grey fabric stretched over a concertina wireframe. It reminded her of visits to the Muggle doctor when she was little. She was commanded to strip in harsh tones and Hermione, having experienced _processing_ before now, didn’t so much as blink in protest as the woman made no move to leave; she hadn’t expected her to. Hermione’s belongings were taken from her, what little things she had left, nothing of particular consequence. She wondered as she moved what had happened to all of her worldly possessions, had they been destroyed? 

Under the watchful eyes of the unnamed woman, Hermione sacrificed one unflattering set of robes, for another, thinner set, and then moved back from around the curtain ready, or not, for what was to come next. 

* * *

As the little lift chugged up the dingy shaft, Hermione focused on the sounds it made, the clanging of rusty metal against stone, the chaffing sound of the guards’ too-tight uniform as he stretched forward to begin writing up his report. She should be scared, she thought blankly. Hermione Granger, _member of the Golden Trio and Hogwarts Prefect_ , would have been afraid. But she wasn’t, whoever she was now. Not because the situation wasn’t dire, _it very much was_ , not because she had any hope of making it out of there alive, _she didn’t_ , but still, she felt nothing. 

What was there left to fear anymore? 

When the lift came to a shuddering halt, Hermione placed a hand on the wall of the metal box to stop herself from toppling forward. She had never quite gained back the weight she had lost during that last year of the war, and she still struggled with her balance. Given her present circumstances, it didn’t seem like she would ever look like herself again now. 

_Why should the outside revert to her time of innocence? The inside certainly had not._

As she once again got lost inside herself, the guard became impatient and gripped her upper arm, tight enough to bruise. Hermione didn’t say anything; no reaction even crossed her features, she just followed alongside him trying to avoid the dampest patches of the floor, so as not to soak her new standard-issue canvas shoes. 

No laces… that was... _interesting._

Hermione kept her eyes forward as much as possible on the walk down the narrow corridor. However, she detected flickers of movement in her peripheral vision on either side, from the inhabited cells. Hermione could probably have named everyone in this wing on sight. She would undoubtedly be recognised, _or maybe she wouldn’t_ , she didn’t know the person in the mirror anymore.

When they reached the very end of the dark, dank line, the guard muttered something under his breath, waving his wand around the bars, and they moved open slowly. He jostled her forward, and before she could move entirely away, he caught her wrist in a cruel grip, his fingers tightening to the point where he could have crushed the bone.

“I’m going to make your life miserable, Granger,” he spat lowly before producing a metallic looking bangle from the inside of his jacket and forcing it onto her hand. As it fastened around her wrist, Hermione felt a stabbing sensation move straight from her now shackled arm, up into her core ripping a gasp from her throat. She instantly stilled, trying to suppress the clawing pain, panting to get her breath back. 

The guard appeared angered by the muted response and let go of her, not bothering to hide his complete revulsion before pushing her roughly away from him by her shoulder and slamming the bars shut. 

Hermione quietly stepped over to the greying mattress that was lying in a darkened corner, and sat neatly, with her legs folded around herself. She shut her eyes until the humming from her centre adjusted, and then she let her head fall back against the war behind her.

She wished tears would fall. 

* * *

_' The cold… Don’t make me go back there’._

Words Hermione had heard Sirius call out in his sleep, so many years before, came back to her that first night. At least, she _assumed_ it was night. There was only a small opening in the outer wall of the cell, no more than a couple of missing bricks, allowing her to see the sky, but the visage was so muted it was hard to tell what time it was. 

Hermione had been walking back up to her room while staying at Grimmauld Place, over Christmas in their fifth year, and she had heard mumbling in the study. Hesitantly creeping forward she had spotted him, the last of his noble house, Sirius Black, sprawled inelegantly on a time ravaged sofa, it’s once opulent fabric as tattered as the rest of the decaying house, more like a crypt than a habitable dwelling. Hermione had moved to stand next to him as his face contorted in pained expression after pained expression, as he unknowingly whimpered out his fears of being sent back to the place that had robbed him of himself. 

Up until that moment, Hermione had wondered why Sirius had never made improvements to his childhood home, why he hadn’t at least attempted to turn the place into something that would resemble a haven. She thought she understood now. Cosmetic changes would never have affected the material knowledge of what they were trying to mask. Sirius would always see what lay beneath them because he had lived in that house through a time of darkness, a darkness that had been the first of many stains on his soul.

The dementors had tortured Sirius, hovering over him for _twelve long years_ , they had stolen away his reason, his happiness, and his youth. They had played on his feelings of guilt for events that were out of his control. 

Hermione had swept his damp hair off his forehead as he had murmured apologies to James, Lily, and shared a whole host of other burdens into the night. 

But Sirius, despite his imagined crimes, had been innocent. 

They weren’t here anymore, the Dementors. There were no more harbingers of pain lurking around the prism, hovering like vultures above a desert carcass. Hermione supposed she should feel grateful for their absence, but she could not. The cloaked figures would have made it quicker. 

* * *

The bars to her cell opening made Hermione sit up; she wasn’t sure of the last time she had moved, it could have been hours or even days, her perception of everything, including time, seemed to blur here. She had been tracking the progression of a small bug along the ceiling for a time, but she couldn’t say how long ago that was now.

“Get up Granger,” the guard barked, and Hermione stepped to her feet and moved to the opening.

Once she was within his grasp, a white metal collar was fastened around her neck, tightened to the point of biting into her skin and made puffing in air difficult; Hermione said nothing. As she turned her head, a long pole was attached to the back of the choker-like restraint; it was then used as a handle of sorts to force her down the corridor. She had seen something similar used on dogs or dangerous animals. She supposed that was what she was now. 

Hermione idly wondered where they were heading, but then she recalled a conversation with Kingsley. She had sat before him in thin robes, dogged by the uncomfortable feeling that she was getting his room dirty just by being there. ‘Changes to Azkaban’ he had said, what he had gone on to explain was meaningless rhetoric, but there were some specifics, notably, showers and exercise. 

The memory made Hermione stiffen momentarily, but it was brief enough that the guard didn’t notice the minor pause. She tried to remember Kingsley’s words, but they weren’t clear, not like his face, an ever-moving transition between contempt and pity. Hermione could still see his eyes that judged, it was an image that had been clear even days later when it became one of the _many_ faces that viewed her in the same way. Even after Hermione had seen so many people come down to gawk at her while she was still in the Ministry holding cells, his face remained. She could still remember how the now Minister for Magic gripped her, during the night of the pretend Potters, as he secured her to the Thestral and they battled the forces of the dark high in the sky. Hermione wondered if he regretted his sure grip now. 

“Are you excited, Granger?” the guard whispered into her ear, and Hermione dropped her face to the dirty floor, instinctively concentrating on her now tatty shoes. She had tried to keep them clean, a simple project she had given herself, but in that, like in all others that had gone before, she had failed. 

“Today you get to meet your new _friends_ , they have all been _dying_ to meet you,” the guard continued, his voice was low and enthused with malicious glee. 

Hermione didn’t raise her face, and he jerked forward to grip her hair tightly, so tight that her eyes watered involuntarily. 

“Always did think you were above everyone else, well, you’ll talk soon enough,” he threatened before he let go of Hermione’s hair and readjusted his grip on the pole at her neck. He pushed it forward before she was ready, making her feel as if the front of the collar would crush her windpipe before he increased his pace, forcing her the rest of the way at double speed.

When it seemed as if they had walked the entire length of the building, they came to a heavily vaulted door. The guard roughly detached the pole from the back of her neck, but the collar remained, _it must have more magic suppressants than the bangle_ Hermione reasoned before the door was ripped open and she was pushed inside. 

The room revealed was about ten times the size of the cell where she had spent her time so far. The walls were a muted cream, though it was apparent that the original colour was probably a white that had long since aged, judging by the peeling in the corners. Hermione blinked. Subdued or not, it was the lightest colour she had seen for days maybe even weeks, and her eyes took a little while to adjust. 

The door behind her slammed shut, and she heard the clanking of several bolts followed by the dim pressure of wards being applied. Hermione moved away from the entrance and as she began to see more than brightness. She detected dark shapes that were almost clinging to the edges of the room, nine in total. The war, it seemed, dictated your behaviour wherever you were. Even thrown to hell, Hermione had counted them without being aware of it. She imagined their backs being placed to the wall had taken even less conscious thought. 

_Nine_. The number rattled around her empty mind for a moment. Hermione wasn’t sure if this was all who remained, or whether ten was the maximum capacity of the chamber. Or maybe these were the ones the guards particularly wanted her thrown in with? It didn’t matter.

She was filled with the instinctive urge to retreat, to make herself smaller. Old Hermione would have backed herself against a wall, but survival had been critical to that girl. Taking careful, measured steps she moved passed a rickety trolley with a few, sad-looking books resting on top. Hermione grabbed the one closest to her hand and debated her next move. There were tables, three of them, but they were all on the other side of the room, _where they were_. 

It wasn’t self-preservation that made Hermione attempt to keep her distance; those instincts had been long suppressed. It wasn’t even the expected taunting or probable violence. She had seen enough of the world to know that if they genuinely wanted to hurt her, it wouldn’t matter if she cowered. She had no means of defending herself, and there was no way the guards would intervene. 

When it came to motivations for her actions now, Hermione simply had no desire to be anywhere near other human life. There were bars where she was kept for a reason. 

Instead, she made her way to the nearest wall and dropped down in front of it, to crouch on the floor; it was no cleaner than anywhere else in the decaying prism, but it did at least appear dry. As Hermione opened the book in her grasp, she could feel all nine sets of eyes on her, but she didn’t flinch. She was _well used_ to eyes on her by now, eyes that held all emotions and intentions. 

After a few tense moments had passed, the Death Eaters resumed whatever it was they had been doing before she arrived. Hermione wondered if they still thought of themselves under that moniker. She occasionally spied them over the top of what she discovered was a compendium of poetry. A small cluster were gathered around one table, conversing in low tones, while the rest were fanned out, standing either alone or in pairs. 

In one of her quick eye darts, Hermione spotted Ade Selwyn standing alone, with his shoulder blades pressed against the crumbling wall behind him. He was mumbling to himself; his insufficient robes were hanging off his diminished frame, exposing the gaunt lines of his neck and collarbone. Skin that had once looked like darkened caramel now looked sickly, and marbled, though it was his face where you could see the real extent of the degeneration that had begun to set in. Selwyn’s eyes were blank at first glance, like her’s, but now and then there was a gleam there like moonlight on a pond that was maniacal. Hermione could see twitching spasms by his right eye and trembles in his hand. 

Hermione averted her eyes and tried to concentrate on the book, or at least give the appearance that she was doing so. She heard murmurs, her name being gritted out through clenched teeth, ‘Mudblood’ being excitedly whispered, but she kept looking down, counting in her head to one hundred and then turning a page to at least appear adequately engaged. 

A shadow fell over her sometime later, the darkness crept up onto her regrettably dirty shoes and crossed legs until the shade seeped into the parchment of her subterfuge prop. Hermione mentally comprised a list of the worst possible scenarios, another hangover from the war, before she looked up to meet the scrutinising gaze of Evander Avery. 

His aristocratic head was tilted to the side, regarding her quizzically. There was no trace of fury or even disgust in his features; on the whole, he was calm, assessing. Despite their positions, him looming over her as he was, she felt no threat, at least not one that was immediate, and so Hermione waited, remaining still until he would make his move. She kept looking at him, not immediately averting her eyes, as had become her habit in the last few months. At first, it had been because it was difficult to watch the unfamiliar expressions on the faces of the people she loved, then because Hermione realised her direct gaze made people uncomfortable. Somehow she had become feared. But not here, not in this room. Evander looked at her, but his face was wholly neutral. Something was freeing in that expression.

Hermione had never seen him _this close_ before, their interactions during the war had been limited, nothing more than swirling robes and slight glimpses. She had heard him talked of though, the quiet Ravenclaw, a gifted boy in his day, solely focussed on academic pursuits, and one of the highest achieving students Hogwarts had ever seen, _before her_. 

Hermione belatedly realised that she had read some of his poetry. There had been a set of verses framed on the fourth-floor corridor that she had found herself lost in one day. Professor Flitwick had found her, giving her a wan smile as he regarded her face almost pushed against the glass. He told her about him, how the professor lamented that they had lost Avery to the other side of the war. 

_There is beauty wherever you seek to find it  
_ _Be it in the delicately carved handle of the knife in your back  
_ _Or the mottled pattern of bruising against your skin_

“What are _you_ doing here?” Evander asked after a time, his voice cool and crisp.

Hermione thought he sounded intelligent, which was illogical; you couldn’t detect acumen from such a sentence. It suited him, though, his voice. It matched the piercing nature of his eyes and the sharpness of his cheekbones. That was a perfect word for this one, _sharp_.

She held up her book, in lieu of any answer, though she knew that wasn’t what he was referring to.

The dark matted hair that framed his face fell forward as he swept his gaze over her to the book, and back again as his lips broke into a soft smile. 

* * *

Hermione laid back on the thin cot, trying to shuffle into a position where it didn’t as if the bones of her back were pressing against the harsh floor. It was a futile effort. She tried to shut her eyes a few times, but they just fell back open, sleep wouldn’t come here. She could hear noises from the neighbouring cells, though only quiet shufflings, it was probable that it was still daytime. Nighttime, from what she had been able to discern so far, was _much_ louder. Hermione hadn’t managed to get into the rhythm of the place yet, mainly as she wasn’t trying. 

As she had been straining to listen to the prisoners around her, Hermione detected a dripping sound, but couldn’t ascertain whether it was from inside the cell or not; it could have been coming from anywhere; the rock was perpetually damp. Her skin felt endlessly misted, the water seemed to coat her so thoroughly it left droplets on her arms - delicate beads that froze if they weren’t wiped away. 

‘Drip… drip… drip… drip… drip’

The consistency of the noise were like beats against the side of her brain. The steadiness worked her up and agitated her senses. 

‘Drip… drip… drip… drip… drip’

It had been just like that, the blood, it had dripped too. Hermione had never thought about it having a _sound_ before, _but it did_.

‘Drip… drip… drip… drip… drip’

That was what it had sounded like as it had fallen from the bedside table onto the hardwood floor, pooling there, the only sound in their silent house. Hermione’s eyes had suddenly moved away from the mess she had made to observe the puddle forming, staining the floor. 

Hermione threw a hand over her eyes to keep them shut. _Remember… REMEMBER_ , she commanded herself, but she couldn’t, it was only ever just flashes. When she was still at the Ministry, being held, she could piece together more, but the noises here interrupted her thoughts, she couldn’t hang on to the impressions. She couldn’t even be sure what was real anymore. Though she knew the blood was, it had to have been. The after was a little clearer, but the before was a vague nightmare of moving imaginations and loud noises that went too fast and were hopelessly out of order. 

Somewhere down the corridor, a guard must have been on patrol; they were never far away here, they liked them all to _feel_ their presence; everything was a mind game. The war never really ended; the enemy just changed. 

‘Thunk… thunk… thunk… thunk… thunk’

The repeated heavy footfalls grated her nerves, and Hermione tried again to block it all out, but it was too much.

‘Thunk… thunk… thunk… thunk… thunk’

Her heartbeat, it had been beating right out of her chest, so fast it had sounded like an accelerating train. It pounded in her ears so loud she couldn’t think, couldn’t catch a breath.

‘Thunk… thunk… thunk… thunk… thunk’

The pounding on the door, they were back, and she was there and Ron… he wasn’t moving, _why wasn’t he moving?_

Hermione gripped the edges of her insubstantial robes in frustration, giving in and opening her eyes to stare impassively at the ceiling in defeat. The rats were back again; they were spelled away often, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade what must have been an entire colony housed within the walls. 

‘Scratch… scratch… scratch… scratch… scratch’

She could hear them scuttling across the floors, hear their tiny, clawed feet as they searched out their food. The vermin didn’t just exist here, _they flourished_. 

‘Scratch… scratch… scratch… scratch… scratch’

Hermione had attacked her hands, her arms, everywhere, the blood, _his blood_ was all over them, and it wasn’t coming off, _why wouldn’t it come off?_

‘Scratch… scratch… scratch… scratch… scratch’

She could remember then, that first set of robes, so stiff they made a noise when she moved, _whenever she moved_. So harsh they made her skin break out in rashes, pulling the blood to the surface, she didn’t feel it. 

Hermione reflectively smoothed her hands over her arms; she had deserved the rashes that had formed like she earned the solitude and the cold now. 

She twisted onto her side and stared at the crumbling brick. 

* * *

Evander was waiting at the back of the dirty room again, standing amongst his _brothers_. He had forgone the offering of books they left on the side, having already almost memorised every ill-kept page. Shaking the tension from off his shoulders, he sat in his usual spot, at his usual table, and tried not to watch the door. She wasn’t here yet, though there was no doubt she would be back, the guards had looked delighted when they had pushed her in the last time, what they anticipated the assembled would do, who knew?

Did they think any of the doomed men here were interested in enacting revenge, on someone who had been little more than a child during the war? Well, maybe some amongst them would, but then again, some of them weren’t in charge of their faculties anymore. Anyone who had any cognitive processing ability would have recognised that the shell deposited in the room once a week was not the same girl who had been fighting for so long. 

For himself, he harboured no desire to cause her harm. Evander was much more motivated to study her. His eyes had regarded her almost desperately, ravenously taking in every tiny detail of her person and committing it to memory. The tightness of the collar they had pressed around her throat, and how it made her breath rasp as she tried to draw in gulps of air and blow it back out without drawing attention to herself. How she had blinked when she entered as if she was bathing in the moon’s glow for the first time. How she averted her gaze at first, her eyes resting on the tips of her tiny feet. 

_How strange, for you to be blinded by the light in a room filled with so much darkness._

He had watched her pick up the poetry book absently and slide down the wall, landing in a small, tidy heap on the floor. Evander wasn’t the only one watching; they all were, there wasn’t much in the way of ‘new’ around here. She was small, too skinny, and incredibly detached from the whole world around her. She should have been terrified walking into the room, and yet he had noticed no fear. Instead of cowering, Hermione Granger had turned the pages of the tattered book systemically, rhythmically, too blankly to be reading.

Her skin was so pale it was almost translucent, a beautiful sort of irony that he could practically see what lurked beneath her flesh as her eyes now gave away nothing. Cuts and dirt marred her slim fingers, but she held the book delicately, though not with a practised air. It was like muscle memory, her hands forming a familiar shape even though her brain did not give the command. 

Awareness prickled along his cheek, and Evander turned his head slightly to meet the eyes of Thorfinn Rowle. The blonde was eyeing him knowingly, with something close to amusement lingering in the corners, something he hadn’t seen on the other man’s face for a long time. He didn’t acknowledge the accusation that look held, he met his eyes dead-on, in silent challenge. Evander liked the man, more than any other he was entombed with, but there were rules about how things were done, even in here. He was in no way attempting to keep his interest to himself. 

Evander turned his head back around to glance at the door before resting his eyes back on the table surface.

What had she done to wind up here? 

_In this now-defunct game, the broken princess was left lying amongst the forgotten ashes._

Evander remembered when he was five or six, finding a bird in the gardens at the Manor while he had been out exploring. Its unusual colouring had stuck out in the crispness of the winter day. Bright, exotic blue plumes had sung against the snow that blanketed the ground. Its body was slumped, with one wing badly broken and Evander had lifted it gently into one hand, resolving to take it inside. His father had belittled his behaviour, aggressively taunting him for his _bleeding heart_ and Evander hadn’t bothered to enlighten him, rather, he let him believe whatever he wanted about his actions. 

Despite his conduct, Evander hadn’t expected the bird to live. He had spared no thought of nursing it back to health, or any other such nonsense. The mercy he had offered was simpler in intent. He couldn’t bear the idea of leaving a creature so beautiful to die in a place so harsh, and so foreign to its existence.

_With my hand, I do not offer salvation, eternal life or peace, but hope, abstract and blissfully uncertain._

Evander had watched the girl with the glazed eyes, her once exuberant curls falling around her face like a shroud of withered feathers. He had decided to speak to her. She had held up her book, offering what had, at first, seemed like a vacant answer to a probing question, until he had studied her, then his countenance changed. She had done as much as she could, probably more than she had for a long time. 

* * *

Hermione had known it would come to this eventually. While she was broadly numb to the world around her, she was still aware; she still had a keen mind. It was a curse in a way; being less lucid would have been a blessing. She had seen the guards and sensed their simmering fury. It had started when she had first been brought into the holding cells at the Ministry, and she hadn’t expected anything different here. 

Ron had been every bit as popular at Hogwarts as she was unpopular, and he had only become more esteemed afterwards. He always had time to stop for a drink after training with the guys, and was still happy to share another tale of the ‘ _adventures of the Golden Trio’_. Ron was affable, relatable, charismatic and for once, once Voldemort was gone, out of Harry’s shadow. 

What Hermione had done, _whatever she had done_ , had taken away one of their own. The guards viewed her as the enemy, and Hermione couldn’t fault their assessment. So she knew she was going to have to pay. Though her lack of reaction wasn’t affected, Hermione knew they wanted more from her, and they _needed_ her to suffer.

There were three of them that day when they came to take her to the shower block; Hermione eyed them slowly, moving her gaze from face to face. She saw it there, on the set of their jaws, in the tension in their shoulders. If only she could have given them what they wanted, maybe this would never have had to happen. Then again, she had never been one for pretence, even when her life was at stake. Hermione had never been an actress, and right now she couldn’t have screamed and begged if her life depended on it, which in a way, she supposed it already did. 

When they made it into the outer room of the shower block, Hermione was roughly pushed down into a hard-backed chair. She kept her gaze fixed straight ahead as the door was warded. She kept it straight ahead as a rusted pair of scissors were produced, and she kept it straight ahead as the long strands of her once vibrant, and maligned curls fell to her feet. 

Hermione recalled the story of Samson and Delilah, having heard it first from an overzealous Sunday school teacher after she had been forced to attend by her mother. Jean Granger had been going through one of her ‘make Hermione social phases’. Maybe if she had headed her mother, she might not have got to this point? It was a pointless rebuke. 

From what her fuzzy mind could piece together, Hermione remembered Samson’s strength lying in his hair, though that had never been the case for her, Hermione was well aware that the guards were not attempting to take away her power, that had long since gone. No, they were looking to tear away another piece of her identity. 

When to tell them that it had already flown away? 

Once they began brandishing the reflective metal in front of her face, Hermione averted her gaze. They may have spoken to her; she couldn’t be sure, she got lost again, staring at the worn tiles and tracking the fluttering brown strands. It took an age, but eventually, once her head felt impossibly light, the two male guards left the room, leaving her with the glowering woman she had seen upon entry. 

Hermione was unceremoniously stripped and pushed into the nearest shower to stand under water so hot it instantly burnt her skin; she was pulled out again after a few minutes. She was left to stand naked in the cold room until her old clothes were thrown at her. Typically they would be issued ‘new’ things, but Hermione was pretty sure as far as she was concerned there would be very little protocol being followed. Once she was dressed, she was taken back to her cell, and none of the guards said another word. 

Hermione waited until they were entirely gone, not just in sight but noise too, all her time in the dark was forcing her to rely on her other senses. In this place just because you couldn’t see a threat, didn’t mean it wasn’t there. 

Once they were far away, she raised a hand falteringly to her head to feel the short, uneven crop that was left behind. The downy fluff felt so foreign against her skin that she moved her hand away. Instead, she ran her fingers over the top of her worn robes, where locks of her hacked hair gripped among the fibres. She pulled out the longest strands and delicately laid them side by side next to her cot as if they were cut stem roses. 

* * *

It didn’t take much time for a routine to be born, unsurprising as it varied so little. Tracking time was impossible, so Hermione focussed on filling moments. 

She carefully picked her robes clean; she scratched at the collected dirt on her shoes. She laid on her cot, first one way and then another and she tried to remember. 

All the time, she tried to remember. 

* * *

When she had been told she had a visitor, Hermione sat in the room she was taken to and straightened her robes. She couldn’t think of a single person that would have wanted to see her, at least, not for any interaction that was likely to end well. She didn’t move when the door opened behind her, not until her vision was filled with familiar bright blonde hair and pale skin.

“Hello, Hermione,” Luna said calmly.

When Hermione felt Luna’s eyes on her, she lifted her head to meet them. She hadn’t done that in months, not since that night, well, not counting her interaction with Evander. But this was different; this was someone from _her life,_ someone who had known her before she began her broken, twisted, half existence. Words wouldn’t come, maybe they never would, but she could do this, offer some small semblance of her forgotten humanity. 

Luna didn’t stay long, and she didn’t ask any questions; she just spoke. Her words were so soft, and light and they bathed Hermione in a gentle kindness that she found harder to deal with than the more common abuse. Luna’s demeanour remained open as she filled her in on the news from outside. Jobs people were taking, plans that were being weaved together, all delivered with a serenity that made Hermione’s skin itch.

Harry was going to get married.

That was the last thing Luna said, though whether it had been deliberately saved that way Hermione wasn’t sure. She was too busy trying not to panic as her throat closed as soon as the words were uttered. But even then no sound would come out. 

She supposed she should be happy; they were moving on, forgetting her and all the pain she had unleashed. She was sure Ginny would make a beautiful bride.

Before she left, Luna deposited a large box on the table, filled with books, lots of them and even a couple of decks of muggle playing cards. 

“You’ll have to share these I’m afraid,” she said, “you can’t have anything in your… room, but I am told you are allowed these in the shared spaces.”

Hermione said nothing. 

She stood to go, and Hermione sucked in a long breath as Luna reached forward and twined her hand through hers. The moment the other girl’s pale flesh collided with hers something inside Hermione broke, she hadn’t been touched, not with kindness since… since…

She understood the visit for what it was when Luna left the room. Hermione clenched her fingers against the edge of the table, once again cursing her lucidity. Even then, she still couldn’t find the words to thank her former friend for her gentle goodbye. 

Back in the cell, after enduring the guard’s taunts as they threw the books at her, Hermione curled up on the dirty cot as silent tears streamed down her face. 

* * *

The third time Evander saw the girl, her hair was gone, not trimmed, not shortened, gone. _Hacked_. As she slumped down the wall clutching a book as she had done before, he regarded the uneven strands and the closeness of her hair. He could see her scalp in places, and those little tufts of coarse hair did more to awaken his darker impulses than anything had in years.

Once it had only been one person that brought out the worst in him, there was a time when just looking at his father would bring forward emotions that the old man had long thought his son incapable of. It wasn’t true, of course. Evander hadn’t ended up with a brand in his arm as a reminder of good deeds after all. 

But now as he looked at the girl, he could feel it fluttering on the edges of his consciousness, the need to remove their skin as they had shorn her hair. The desire to hold them down to look at them more carefully, as if examining insects under a magnifying glass, to make them twitch in discomfort like they tried to do to her, to give them no room to breathe. 

_Fear me. I never needed a mask to cover the violence that I am capable of, for my face was forever calm as I snuffed out life._

Evander felt more than saw the reactions of the room around him. While no one from the side of the so-called light, let alone someone as prominent as her, could have been considered _welcome,_ there was an us and them that came into force while in prison, the traditional rules didn’t apply. If the guards had done it to her, they could _attempt_ to do it to them. 

Being a Death Eater, and surviving the inclusion in their ranks was all about politics, some may have considered Evander in a weaker position because he had not been housed with most of the others while at school, but it was no matter. He had been a quiet child, with a father to avoid, and he was more adept at reading an unspoken shift in a collection of people than most, and he felt it then. He could feel the room reforming around him. 

In a way that the guards would never understand, in a way that the girl herself probably wouldn’t even have considered, everything had changed. That crop was as efficient as a mark being branded into her arm. She was one of them now, she hadn’t chosen it, much like he hadn’t, but it didn’t alter the outcome. 

Thoughts of brands made Evander look at the skin on her arms; he could see faint burn marks, whatever it had been it hadn’t been enough to blister, just sufficient to leave swathes of unusually red skin.

His eyes skimmed along her flesh to her hands; they were clear, with no nicks or bruising. 

She had let it happen. 

* * *

Hermione’s first thought as she jolted awake was one of mild surprise that she had been asleep; it took her a moment to register the crippling pain in her throat. It was raw, ripped to ribbons. Her heart rate was not just accelerated; it was pounding; there was a violent beating in her chest, making her torso heave unnaturally. 

She had been screaming. 

Her dreams, a pastiche of shaky, bloody hands, too white flesh and spellfire, undercut with pressuring anxiety, faded. 

She settled her body back into the cot, reaching for the insubstantial blanket to cover her now damp robes. It was moments before other anguished yells permeated her panic attack, the noise ripping through the brick.

Was this the first time her wails had joined the lost soul’s chorus? 

* * *

After Evander had spoken to her that first day, he made a point of sitting with her for a least a few minutes of their stretch in the room. He seemed pleased with the additional reading material and would often finish a particular page or paragraph only to push the paper into Hermione’s hands for her to read also. She would nod her head when she was done, and he would take it back. Sometimes he would talk to her, little things about the routine, like how they came to the room once a week, Hermione couldn’t be sure if she had assumed it was more or less time passed between stints. 

Sometimes others would come over, mainly to just take a closer look at her before they walked away, though Thorfinn Rowle would stay longer at times, sitting down next to Avery so they could whisper among themselves.

Hermione was struggling to finish an unfamiliar verse Evander had given her when quick steps sounded in front of them. 

“Stay still,” he whispered calmly into her ear, his words ceasing her fingers path along the bottom of the line she was reading, and she complied immediately. 

Rabastan Lestrange came to a halt in front of her, Hermione didn’t look up, but she could hear his laboured breathing. She could identify him from the skin she could see, exposed by the trouser legs to his robes that didn’t quite reach the ground. Evander circled a hand around her wrist, and Hermione suppressed a flinch at the surprisingly warm touch, he had never done that before. It was different to how it had felt when Luna reached for her, her friend’s hand had broken some of her walls down, Evander’s fortified them.

“Out of the way, Avery,” Rabastan snapped aggressively, moving forward. His canvassed feet were almost under her crossed knees. 

“Fuck off Lestrange,” a voice sounded from the other side of the room, and Thorfinn moved around the stationary observers to settle on her other side, arms folded and leaning relaxed against the wall. 

Rabastan looked down at her with a sneer lighting his lips. “What the fuck are you doing here, Granger? How did the Order’s pet genius manage to get herself thrown in here with the damned?”

She didn’t respond, though, as had become her custom, she glanced up to meet his gaze, Rabastan looked like he would begin frothing at the mouth at any moment.

“Come on, fair’s fair. You know why _we’re_ here,” he called mockingly and dropped to his knees in a quick movement that made Thorfinn reach an arm forward that he battered away.

“Fuck you Rowle,” he spat, before ripping up the sleeve of his thin robes and shoving it under her nose, “See Granger, you know _our_ secrets.”

The Dark Mark that sat against Rabastan flesh was faded a little now. The lines around the skull and snake were marginally blurred. The entrenched ink that remained looked like a child had painted slightly outside the borders. The body of the tattoo was no longer black; it was… murky grey, _just like everything else_. 

“It still hurts,” Rabastan muttered, falling back to sit on his bum and folding his legs in front of him.

Hermione moved her hand to cover Evander’s fingers, gently pulling them apart and releasing her wrist from his solid grasp. Never taking her eyes from her forearm, she moved up the thin material of her sleeve and exposed the jagged scarred lettering that would never heal. She laid it upturned against her knee, mirroring his pose. 

“Still hurt?” Rabastan croaked. 

Hermione nodded. 

* * *

The route to the shower block took Evander past the cell that housed her. _Hermione_. 

He thought about her name often. It had never even stuck in his brain before. At meetings, she had been ‘Granger’, the unfamiliar name being a reminder to all of her other moniker, ‘the Mudblood’. He didn’t use her name, not out loud at least; he had a feeling she wouldn’t answer to it at present. 

On their way passed, Evander would turn his head as much as he could, against the force of the collar, just in time to get a glimpse of her folded up on the cot, staring blankly at the ceiling. But today she was sat in the very centre of the floor, resting on her knees. Hermione was holding her hands out in front of her and away from her body.

Like she was afraid of them. 

* * *

There were three thousand, two hundred and seventeen slick grey bricks that made up the walls of her crumbling cell. 

She was taken for a shower on a Monday, though she had no idea whether it was a consistent time. 

On Wednesdays, the guards came in for a cell ‘inspection’ though their behaviour varied. Some of them just liked to stare at her, to try and make her uncomfortable. Some whispered taunts, and some roughed her up a little. One had even undone his belt once, stalking towards her and listing off all the ways he would make her scream. 

Hermione had looked back at him, as blankly as ever, though inside her heart had begun to race. Something in her vacant expression made him pause. He left soon after that, though he slapped the side of her face as he left, spitting at her when she crumpled to the floor. 

She reflected that they still weirdly feared her, even in her incapacitated state.

Fridays she was thrown in with the Death Eaters, all that remained of them, or so Avery had told her. 

* * *

It took months, maybe longer, but finally, with some gentle coaxing from Evander, Hermione moved to sit at one of the tables when she came to the room. He sometimes looked over what she was reading or invited her to swap books with him; there wasn’t a lot to pick from. 

Luna had not been back. 

Hermione barely took in words, but it was something to do. She often wondered how old Hermione, _whole Hermione_ , would feel about her now. Even reading was lost to her, the words scattered and danced about the pages, mocking her blankness.

As she sat trying to thread the latest sentence through her mind, a chair in front of her was dragged across the floor, and Louis Travers dropped languidly into it. 

“Slow,” Evander whispered in her ear, and Hermione softly placed the book she was holding on the table in front of her, before instinctively moving her arm towards Evander. Without any further word between them, he gently circled his warm fingers around her wrist, in a secure loop. It was enough encouragement for her to move her eyes from the top of the table. 

Hermione had always thought Travers had a ‘kind face’ and had idly deliberated whether that was an advantage in his chosen… _profession_. Despite his incarceration, he looked much the same as he ever had, his skin, unlike hers, had retained his sun-kissed colour. 

“Your screaming,” he began, apropos to nothing, “you should start practising Occlumency.”

Hermione looked up at him, her face revealing nothing. 

“It helps with some of the darker thoughts,” he explained, looking at her intently.

She pondered for a while. Hermione didn’t consider that she had _thoughts_ at all, regardless of their place on the colour spectrum. Her brain now only seemed to list things rather than _think_ of anything. However, she supposed she did expend most of her mental energy trying to separate reality from either imagination or hallucination, which didn’t leave much for high-level reflection. 

“You don’t need a wand,” he continued before he looked at Evander, the two men stared at each other for a few moments, silent communication moving between them until Evander nodded and Travers looked back at her. 

“I could help you.”

* * *

When Evander woke from a rare dream, it was to the bizarre sensation that he felt peaceful. He couldn’t remember all of it, only dregs, like the bottom of an abandoned coffee cup remained. 

He had seen the bird again, it was still broken, still lost and in the wrong place but it rested on the ledge at the crack in his cell wall and looked out. In the dawning light, he could see how its feathers had been cropped close, though they had looked better, healthier than Evander had remembered seeing before. 

_All things in good time_. 

* * *

Images fluttered behind Hermione’s eyes at regular intervals, when it wasn’t that night it was snippets from the days and weeks afterwards. Kingsley’s concerned frown, Luna’s absent gaze and worst of all Harry’s disbelieving expression. 

As painful as it was to see them sitting in silent judgement of her, it was worse when they were gone, and she was alone again. 

* * *

Hermione wasn’t certain when her existence inside the prison walls became normal; nothing had been standard in such a long time. Maybe it had never been. But somehow, whether it was just the routine or the numb familiarity, it became her way of life. 

She seemed to pick up that the Death Eaters had changed around her now, maybe her presence was normal for them too? Eyes didn’t stare at her when she entered the room anymore, at least not all at once, and if they did look, it was not for long. Some even spoke to her, though, unlike the guards, they never seemed expectant of a reply.

They weren’t what she would once have called kind, at least not overtly. Their ways were different, and often understated or harsh. It sometimes took her hours after interactions to unpick the dialogue to find what was lingering underneath.

Following a particularly _rigorous_ guard inspection, Hermione had entered the white space a little stiffly as she tried to coax her limbs to move rhythmically. She could almost feel the intake of breath as her hand went to the wall to support her limping gait. Her time in the quiet made it easier for her to pick up on subtle changes in ways Hermione never had before. When she flinchingly took her usual seat, it was only to wince again when the table was disturbed by Rabastan sitting down slowly in front of them. 

“More than one?” he asked roughly, leaning forward on the rickety furniture and baring his teeth.

When she nodded, he released a slight hiss before he slammed his palms down in front of her. Hermione’s eyes were drawn to them, placed as they were, directly in her line of vision. Rough abrasions and untreated cuts lined the surface of his knuckles, and when Hermione managed to look up, he was smirking at her. 

“More than one this week for me too, though, I got a few good hits in before I went down.”

Rabastan turned away then, berating Thorfinn over some action that happened in a time long forgotten. For the first time since Hermione had been imprisoned, the atmosphere was almost jovial, at least by their standards. It didn’t make it better. But it stopped her thinking about Wednesday night when she had curled up on the floor of the cell, too weak to get up and lay on the thin mattress as she coughed up blood in great heaves that reminded her with every breath how much of a beating she had taken. 

* * *

Hermione wasn’t sure when Evander had noticed that she wasn’t _actually_ reading, whether it had been evident when she was totally faking or only now when she was trying but failing. Either way, he did. Evander was the most attentive person she had ever known. One day he stopped pressing passages into her hesitant fingers, and she knew. 

He never called her out, either on her deception or the difficulties she couldn’t overcome. Instead, he started reading to her. His voice would be softer at these times than the tone he usually used, and he would sit closer. He wouldn’t say anything else. He just recited the words on the pages in a low register, a steady timber. As if it was a perfectly regular thing to do.

It wasn’t any easier at first, to process the words that were spoken. Where the ink lines on the parchment had fluttered and scrambled in front of Hermione’s eyes, Evander’s words floated independently of each other as they left his lips, the sentences got hopelessly out of order. Hermione couldn’t follow the meanings, but the emotion he expressed somehow permeated her shell.

Even though Evander spoke quietly, he spoke beautifully. His delivery was crisp and earnest, and Hermione was left in no doubt that he _felt_ whatever overture he was absorbed in. 

It was captivating, it brought colour to the room around them, and though she occasionally noticed that some of the others moved closer, the performance only ever seemed to be for her.

Over time they came back to her, Evander’s glistening words. If she concentrated hard enough, Hermione could get them to lay straight. They didn’t help her to feel, but they hinted that one day, there might be a possibility she could emote some semblance of their meaning. 

* * *

Evander would drop his inflexion lower when he slipped his _own words_ into those he recited. He tried to control himself not to do it often, and at least managed to school his features, steadfastly resting his eyes onto the parchment when a line from his mind would slip from his tongue. 

He could see how Hermione struggled. How he would place a picture in front of her, and it would somehow break as it reached her fingers, how she would falter and move to piece it back together again.

_Pieces, pieces, pieces, and none of them the right fit to make the broken bird whole again._

Evander’s hands would grip the book within his grasp reflectively as he bore his soul, though not through fear of discovery. He knew if she were better, she would suss him in an instant, and one day she would. Maybe it would be a game then, a _real_ exchange. For now, it was an irregular volley, but he didn’t mind. 

He couldn’t mind; he had no choice but to air the words that climbed his throat. 

They formed there when she came in the room and quietly took her seat next to him; they formed sentences, each deeper than the last when she pushed her arm towards his so that he could hold her wrist.

She didn’t know they were there yet, didn’t think they were for her, but she would.

* * *

The atmosphere was different that day, there was a slight weight to the air around them that might have been imperceptible to anyone else, but to the occupants of that room, stained by war, it was all too clear. On reflection, it had been ramping to this for a while. Hermione had not fared well in the last few weeks and after a few occasions of walking into the room absently clutching at herself to be able to keep moving she had come in this week with a bruise on her face. 

It was blue, Evander noted with some stirring of emotion. The contusion covered her right lid and permeated the ever-present bag underneath it. A ripple of colour that was a vibrant lapis in the centre and faded out to shades of grey. 

He touched her face for the first time that day, lightly pressing his fingers under her chin to move her head from one side to the other.

_Who, upon finding the form of a broken bird, would crush its damaged wings under their heel?_

He moved his chair closer than ever to Hermione as two guards walked into the barren room, halfway through their allotted time, when two more arrived and stood by the door as the first to enter stepped forward, Evander glanced at Thorfinn who nodded grimly.

The focus of the _invading forces_ was entirely on Hermione; you would have been forgiven for thinking that she was a lone person in the room from the way they ignored the serial sinners around her. Evander felt his lip curl into a sneer as he watched the look of pure contempt flash across the face of the guard that was the closest to their table. 

“Look at that Stephens, didn’t take her long to _ingratiate_ herself did it,” the first man said. Evander had never bothered to learn their names, they were less than nothing to him, though he did look up to look the man over, to catch him staring down at Hermione with a hungry glint in his eye.

“Even evil has use of a whore,” the other guard spoke, and they both laughed at his _quip_. 

Evander tilted his head to the side as he watched them. _Meaning you wish you could fuck her_ , he thought disgusted, though who could tell whether their drive was to humiliate or to find a way to assert their dominance finally. Did it irritate them more that she didn’t react, or that they were somehow still frightened of her? 

“Don’t know what he ever saw in you, sour cow. You were his choice, he could have had anyone, and you killed him,” the accusation rang out in the now silent room though no one moved to react. 

“In his sleep. He deserved better than that,” the other guard continued.

Hermione, for her part, ignored their taunting, though Evander saw her wince as they mentioned the death. _The murder_. It had been the first indication any of them had gotten as to how she had ended up there. 

He had assumed murder, and either Potter or Weasley seemed the most likely targets. Evander had considered, given what she had done for the war, that almost anyone else might have been, well, not forgivable, but would have still ensured the others would get her out of it. The side of light was well practised in turning a blind eye when they thought it was for the greater good. 

Though murder, in his sleep? Not a chance. 

Evander reached under the table to circle her small wrist in his hand as the taunts continued. 

“Always thought she was above where she was from.”

“Obviously not happy with her little slice of the fame pie.”

_Spare me, if there is such a thing as the divine, spare me. Give me boredom, give me eternal damnation but do not make me suffer fools._

The guards moved closer, their tones heightening as anger began to cloud their already questionable judgment. Thorfinn walked through them purposefully, sitting at the table in front of himself and Hermione.

Evander tightened his grip on her arm. His fingers clenched almost to the point of causing her pain; it was enough for her to turn her head to look at him, a question on her face, it was enough for her to look and see him, see in his eyes how their words meant nothing.

“Uppity bitch,” the guard hissed, spittle flying from his mouth. 

Thorfinn sat forward to wipe the saliva that had landed on her cheek gently. His dirty hands left more of a mark than the guard had done, but the point had been made. 

Hermione didn’t move.

“Serves you right that they would put you in here.”

“Only thing more suitable than death is to live being punished for what you have done.”

Louis moved then, stopping to stand behind Hermione’s chair. An action that didn’t surprise Evander. Travers was quite taken with the little witch, devoting much of their shared time to helping her with Occlumency, despite her reticence. Evander had thought it was for the sheer relief of having _something_ to do, but maybe there was more to it than that. 

Hermione’s silence was comforting in a way that nothing else here was. Though it was more than her lack of speech, whatever Hermione had done, not that he had honestly ever cared, she was still _inherently good_ , and it shone from within her. Had she truly been what the guards thought of her, she wouldn’t have been so broken. 

It was their loss. 

Evander hoped it was his gain, but it was too soon to tell.

They spat at her before leaving. Evander didn’t let go of her wrist until they were broken apart when they came back to announce the end of time. 

* * *

Sometimes, when the prism was quiet, and Hermione’s mind was clear from the consistent buzzing, she would sit forward on the end of the cot and trace patterns into the dirty floor with a single finger. It was a rudimentary attempt at a timeline, often hopelessly out of order and filled with gaping holes in her memory. 

More often than not, the exercise would end with Hermione on her feet, rubbing all the progress away with the bottom of her shoes. But some days a new memory would come, dragged from somewhere in the recesses of her splinted mind and Hermione would place it onto the dirty ground before laying back on the cot, sleeping as if she could clutch the newly discovered part of herself to her chest.

* * *

Selwyn made a move on a day that was like every other, with no idea of time or season, without any possible catalyst that Hermione could think of. 

Not that he would need one.

All of them showed signs of mental scarring, most of them had been fighting before she was even born, but Ade had lost his faculties a long time before. 

When Hermione walked up to get a book from the rickety trolley, he pounced, shoving her against a wall, his hand pushing hard into her shoulder as he looked at her wildly. She didn’t fight against him; rather, she became limp in his hold. Her lack of reaction seemed to confuse him at first before it enraged him, and he lifted an arm to wrap a hand around her throat. With the angry touch, something inside her entire being shifted, unlocking an instinct that she had long thought buried. 

As he hissed at her in a series of nonsensical ramblings, he increased the already brutal pressure against her windpipe, and Hermione lifted her hands and pushed her thumbs into his eyes, just enough so that he dropped her. Without his body pinning her savagely, she slumped to the floor, and it was only then that she realised how everyone else was on their feet.

Evander had rushed forward and was clutching at her chin, moving it this way and that, looking at her neck, saying something, but none of it registered, it had all come back, all of it, tears ran down her face so fast she could barely see. 

_Her and Ron, broken and bloodied standing amongst the rubble at the final battle. He reached out his hand and looped it through hers, and she gave him a hesitant smile. Now they could live._

_Her and Ron as she peeled off her clothes, his eyes lingering on the scar that cut across her torso, on the words that were carved into her arms._

_Her and Ron as he gave her a ring, as she said yes. Him lifting her off the ground and twirling her body as they both laughed in the orchard of the Burrow._

_Ron buying her flowers when she got her first job at the Ministry. ‘I’m so proud of you, even if it’s just for now’._

_Her and Ron buying their first place, smaller than he had been expecting, but cosy and warm._

_Her and Ron fitting out the house, arguing about each other’s stuff, little squabbles, the stuff of life._

_Her and Ron in a heated staring match across the table as he complained about dinner, again. ‘Why couldn’t you just get back earlier, I’m so sick of eating the same thing all the time’._

_Ron holding her in the night as she woke up screaming, crying. The shadows of the past still clawing into her._

_Her and Ron being followed by the press everywhere, her hating it and him taking it all in his stride._

_Ron coming home after an argument holding a bag of ice-cream through the kitchen door before he walked in, making her laugh._

_Her rushing home after work to make him one of his favourites for their anniversary, him smiling and kissing her pastry mix splattered face as she whooped when she pulled the meal out of the oven._

_Her being knocked over by an enthusiastic photographer and Ron not noticing as he posed for pictures._

_Their warm little home becoming colder._

_Ron being made Auror, a change in shift patterns, coming home later and later._

_The first time she found a number in his trouser pocket when she was doing a wash._

_And the next…_

_And the next..._

_Her teaching Ron to drive, screaming as he mounted a roundabout and quick, frantic sex in the backseats in an unobserved lane._

_Fucking and fighting, fucking and fighting, fucking and fighting._

_The alcohol, first a few drinks here and there and then always a drink._

_Her hiding out at work, requesting extra projects and putting in more hours than she needed._

_Slurring words and lingering touches, unwanted touches._

_Ron blaming her, blaming her for her lack of maternal instinct._

_Her looking at Ginny running around the baby clothes store, wondering if she was broken because it didn’t excite her._

_Then that night, the night it had all gone wrong. Ron was there, and he was drunk, so much drunker than he had ever been before. He thought she was having an affair, something to account for her hours of work and she laughed at him, laughed, she told him all about the numbers, and he blanched._

_‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ he screamed._

_‘Because I didn’t care,’ she replied without thinking, and the silence was deafening._

_He raced towards her then, his eyes glazed, clouded by hurt and whisky; he grabbed her throat, his thick fingers coiling there as he pushed her against the wall… the pain… the anger… the suppressed hurt and humiliation…_

“I snapped,” she said into the aged cream room, and she felt all eyes on her, she hadn’t spoken since that night; the words felt foreign on her tongue. 

She looked up at Evander who was staring at her wide-eyed, he dropped down to sit on the ground next to her and pulled her against his side, not firmly or affectionately but safely, she didn’t say anything else, he didn’t ask her for anything else. 

She felt safe. It was the first definitive emotion she could register having felt for the longest time.

* * *

The guards had eventually come in, dragging away a screaming Selwyn and a shell-shocked Hermione in their wake. Evander supposed once they had waited long enough to realise that the wizard wasn’t actually about to kill her, it made sense to remove him before he became unmanageable, and her before the rest of them could do anything to help her. 

Evander sat back in his usual seat numbly, his eyes falling back to the wall where she had been held. He’d had to face the reality she was being mistreated for months, visible marks on her body and an increasingly hollow look to her face, but seeing it had been an entirely different thing.

Then she had spoken, her tear-clogged words almost ripping through his chest, cutting him open with surprise.

For the first time, he had suppressed what he wanted to say. ‘Of course, you snapped’, he nearly screamed, angry beyond any credible intelligence at people who were long dead. People that had shaped her into what she was. Anger at himself for being part of the threat that had snatched away from her childhood, and anger at her. Anger at her for in any way caring what she did to him. 

He felt Thorfinn sit in the chair next to him and he hung his head, he didn’t want to talk about it, he _needed_ to run, to do something, anything that would remove the new images he had of the bruises lining her throat, the fear in her eyes. 

_Dreams have come so often, your face lit with the inner workings of your heart, but never fear, why come back to all that you are if that is all you will feel?_

* * *

When Hermione was back in the confines of the cell, she dried her eyes. So many things had awoken in her, memories of a time when she had gotten all she ever wanted, only to find that the dreams were as tarnished as she was. 

As it turned out, she had never deserved happiness.

She could spend a lifetime now, piecing together all of the events, working out the minute detail of what had happened, _why_ it had happened.

Or not. 

Hermione looked down at the thin bangle on her arm, contemplating. When Selwyn had grabbed her, she had felt a surge in her core. A similar sensation to the binding she had felt when the restraint had been pressed onto her wrist in the first place.

She was sure old Hermione would have said it was time to make a _moral_ choice, but old Hermione wasn’t there. 

* * *

When Hermione sat at the table the next time, Rabastan was there. Evander had gotten up as she sat down, moving to the other side of the room to calm Selwyn. She tried to concentrate on her book to avoid listening to the words that were leaking from the rabid wizard’s mouth, that was until a deck of cards hit her chest. 

Rabastan ripped the book out of her fingers when she didn’t stop to ask what he was doing, and Hermione felt a simmering irritation, so low it barely registered, but it was there. 

“For fuck’s sake, teach me a game I don’t know,” he barked, and Hermione sat up a little straighter before fanning the cards out in between her fingers.

After a moment’s contemplation, she nodded and set up the deck to teach him how to play poker. She already knew he would be terrible at it. 

* * *

Hermione’s speech did not go back to normal straight away; she had gotten used to saying little, and the habit stuck, after all, it wasn’t as if there was a great deal to discuss where they were. So when she moved her lips to Evander’s ear, he stiffened in surprise before she dropped her metal-clad wrist across his poetry volume.

“I may have found a way.”

His hand reached up to loop around her hand holding it tightly, his eyes searching hers in silent question, before he nodded, signalling Thorfinn from his side of the room.

Words were unnecessary when people already understood what you were trying to say. 

* * *

Hermione stepped over the temporarily incapacitated guard and walked over to Thorfinn’s cell; it had been decided that while they were without magic, he was the biggest asset, literally. Once the bars clanked open, she released his bracelet, and he pulled her into a firm, quick, embrace before walking past her to go to the guard’s side. She immediately moved to Evander’s cell, repeating the process. 

In the end, it was all done with very minimal fuss, bar herself and Evander having a silent conversation outside Ade’s cell before she pushed ahead and released him. 

“He’s a liability,” Rabastan whispered as he stalked passed, dropping a thick coat over her shoulders. 

“Aren’t we all,” she replied, and he smirked at her.

Now they were stood at the edge of the crumbling rock, looking out across the raging sea. Evander leant forward and circled her wrist with his delicate fingers.

“Hermione?” 

She looked up at him, the man she knew to be detached enough from life’s experience to be a monster, a man that had now become her anchor and she nodded. His face broke into a warm smile, the kind of smile that made her feel heat in the tips of her fingers, made her feel like she might be able to return it one day.

He stepped forward and laid a kiss on her forehead, running his empty hand through her shorn hair.

* * *

 _And now they’re outside ready to bust  
_ _It looks like you might be one of us_


	2. TRACK 2: Lullaby

**TRACK 2**

[Hermione Granger x Reuben Yaxley (Yaxley)]

 _On candy stripe legs the spiderman comes  
_ _Softly through the shadow of the evening sun  
_ _Stealing past the windows of the blissfully dead  
_ _Looking for the victim shivering in bed  
_ _Searching out fear in the gathering gloom and suddenly!  
_ _A movement in the corner of the room!  
_ _And there is nothing I can do  
_ _When I realise with fright  
_ _That the spiderman is having me for dinner tonight..._

Lullaby / The Cure [1989]

* * *

_Thump… Thump… Thump_

Hermione woke to an aggressive sound carelessly ripping her from her dreams. She frowned pointlessly at her bedroom ceiling. It felt like only minutes before she had closed her eyes and yet when she stretched to look at the softly blinking alarm clock, it was somehow gone ten. A few months ago, that would have been a surprise; Hermione had never been in the habit of sleeping late, she had always preferred to get up and face the day. Lately, however, Hermione had been struggling to get up before lunch.

Immediately following the war, Hermione had slept for what felt like days at a time. Her body and mind had been desperate for some respite. That was until she moved out on her own. A year after the Battle of Hogwarts she left Grimmauld Place and set up at parent’s old house. Her childhood home had been vacant for two years, and Hermione had warmed to the idea of making it her own. It was a decision she still regularly questioned, especially as the move had coincided with the beginning of a plague of insomnia so violent it barely felt like she slept at all. 

After one too many meetups with friends where Hermione had all but fallen asleep in her coffee, Ginny had insisted she visited a Healer. And so, after a lot of prodding, she had gone to St. Mungo’s, only for them to conclude that _nothing_ was wrong with her. 

In a way, Hermione had expected their diagnosis or lack thereof. She knew she never had any problems _getting_ to sleep. Her dad had routinely suffered from sleep deprivation, and he used to talk about how he would lay in bed each night, wide awake and frustrated, too tired to do anything to distract himself, but too awake to sleep. That was not the case for Hermione; every night, her eyes would close almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, but she never woke up feeling refreshed.

_Thump… Thump… Thump_

The front door.

Urgh.

Hermione sighed and dragged herself from out of the warm, comfortable bed, shrugging on a dressing gown and moving down the stairs, doing her best to ignore the protests from her tired limbs. She felt sore all over like she had spent the night running a marathon instead of tucked up safely in her room.

The team at St. Mungo’s’ hadn’t been able to shed any light on that either. Nothing in her results could explain her increased muscle fatigue or her bruises. They seemed familiar somehow. They occurred in regularly repeating patterns, composed of tiny mottled marks over her torso and legs. But the doctors she saw couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. Nor could they explain how the bruising always seemed to be old, faded as if it happened weeks before. 

When Hermione reached her front door, she opened it just a slither, not wanting her nosy neighbours to see into her house or that she wasn’t yet dressed. When she looked through the crack, she met the concerned expression of Harry. She allowed herself a moment of resting her head against the back of the door before she stepped to the side, and he barrelled into the hall. 

“Merlin you look like hell Mione,” he said in place of a greeting and Hermione bristled. Maybe she would look better if people let her sleep when she could.

“Thanks very much,” she responded dryly, rolling her eyes and heading into the kitchen to put the kettle on, she needed caffeine as desperately as she needed air right now.

“You know I don’t mean it like that,” Harry called after her.

Hermione clattered around getting the drinks while Harry settled himself at the table. “We haven’t seen you,” he said semi accusingly. “What’s going on, Mione? Work told me you had gone sick?”

“I _am_ sick,” she snapped defensively, though she felt a stab of guilt at the same time. She _had_ been avoiding anything social for over a month. Her ever-increasing tiredness made her irritable and less able to be around people, and she had never been much of a social butterfly in the first place. Two days ago that extended to work. Trying to get up at the time she needed and get ready and leave the house had become too much. 

_She was sick_ , at least she thought she was, Hermione wasn’t sure anymore.

“That’s just not like you,” Harry said, picking up the cup she had hurried across to him. “Is there something going on? Something you’re not telling me?”

Hermione read the concern in his gaze and her attitude softened. It suddenly seemed self-indulgent to haul up in the house and shut herself off from the world. She reached forward, laying a hand over his. 

“It’s nothing, Harry,” she said reassuringly. “I’m just exhausted,” she sighed, taking a fortifying swig of her strong coffee. 

“Nightmares?” he asked knowingly, but she shook her head.

“No, I don’t think so,” she replied honestly. “At least, none that I remember.”

In the first few months following her ordeal at Malfoy Manor, Hermione had been besieged by nightmares of all forms. Graphic and sensory retellings of her torture, changes of viewpoint where she would be forced to hover over events like an unseen spectre, unable to help the girl screaming for her life. But she had gotten those under control. _Hadn’t she?_ Hermione set her coffee cup down. She had always woken covered in sweat and agitated when those dreams struck and that hadn’t been happening. 

“Look, Hermione,” Harry began again, his tone softening. “Why don’t you come over for dinner tomorrow, yeah? Stay over with Ginny and me for a few days. Not getting out can’t be helping. If you still feel bad after a couple of nights, we’ll take you to the Healers again. If we go on mass, they’re bound to do something.”

Hermione wanted to protest, people mothering _her_ didn’t feel natural, but the plea in Harry’s tone stopped her, _he was trying_. Hermione knew Harry’s save the world complex of old; he needed to feel that he could fix all of her problems, and she was just exhausted enough to give no protest. She sagged.

“Ok Harry, tomorrow,” she confirmed though her smile was only fifty per cent authentic. 

* * *

After Harry had gone, Hermione set about the task of waking herself up. She walked up to the bathroom but decided against a shower, opting to have a bath before bed instead, with the dim hope that it would help her relax into a peaceful slumber. Hermione stood in front of her sink and almost dropped her toothbrush when she caught sight of her reflection. For once it appeared that Harry had not given over to hyperbole, _she did look like hell_. 

Her eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed; in fact, all of the skin around her eyes had a faintly pink hue as well as being incredibly puffy. Dark patches surrounded the bottom of her eyes, the markings looking almost purple against her too-pale skin. Her lips looked enlarged and deeper in colour against the drawn skin of her cheeks; her hair was matted beyond all reason.

She sighed; there was nothing she could do to fix it, not until she got more sleep. Hermione had always been against glamour charms, but she conceded that _maybe_ it was a good idea to apply a few tomorrow. Harry, attentive as he was, would not dwell on an issue if he assumed it resolved. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to worry about her for no reason. 

* * *

The hours of the day dragged until Hermione conceded around nine in the evening that she _needed_ to get back into bed. _Maybe an early night would help turn things around_? The sun had yet to completely sink from the sky when she pulled on a fresh nightshirt and folded herself amongst the sheets. As was her habit, Hermione picked her book off the nightstand but only managed a few pages before her eyes were drooping, yawning widely she marked her page, settled under the covers and turned off the bedside lamp. 

* * *

Hermione stirred in bed, her eyes blinking into wakefulness though she couldn’t work out what had woken her. There was no thudding this time. It still appeared to be the dead of night; she shivered as she processed the chill in the room and shuffled to tug at the cover to pull it over tighter but as Hermione moved she realised the curtains were open. _She’d closed them before bed, hadn’t she?_

The soft glow of the moon illuminated the end of her bed and shadows from the trees outside checkered light patterns against the far wall making the small space awash with creeping greys. Something felt off. As she came to her senses, Hermione could have almost sworn she could feel another presence.

“Who’s there?” she called croakily, her voice not yet fully responsive.

Hermione heard a low chuckle, and she jumped as her heart began to race, she hadn’t expected a response. It was just one of those things you did, wasn’t it? When you were scared, you shouted out into the darkness. The darkness wasn’t supposed to respond. 

Hermione risked a glance in the corner, where she thought the noise had come from, and as her eyes adjusted, she could see the outline of a dark cloak. Her eyes travelled warily up, higher and higher, revealing a tall, broad form and piercing blue eyes. There was a man in her room, a man with jet black hair that fell about his shoulders, a man leaning against her chest of drawers with languid ease.

As recognition dawned on her she gasped, Yaxley, _Reuben Yaxley_ , one of the many Death Eaters she had fought against in the Final Battle, but he had been put into Azkaban, _hadn’t he?_ Yes, he had, Hermione remembered seeing him tied up with the Aurors outside the Great Hall. She had seen his name in the papers. 

_How was he here?_

Unconsciously, Hermione gathered up the cover and pulled it higher up her chest, seeking a barrier that she already knew would be ineffective. 

“Now, Hermione,” he said, and his voice was a deep, shuddering growl like a stretching tiger. “After all of our time together you would think you would be used to seeing me by now,” he said smugly crossing his arms over his chest and staring at her heatedly.

Hermione’s brain scrambled, he was mad, _insane_ , that was the only explanation. She had only seen him three times in her whole life, and she was sure they had never said as much as two words to each other. Unless you counted him yelling at her, Harry and Ron when they attempted to flee the Ministry, which she didn’t. 

“I don’t understand,” she said weakly, her voice no more certain despite being more awake than she had been for months. 

He ignored her. Instead, he took large, yet creeping steps towards the foot of her bed and Hermione felt ice slip down her spine as his face was made clearer, illuminated by the moon’s glare. With every soft step onto her carpet, he looked bigger, more real.

As soon as he was close enough, his fingers gripped the end of the bedpost, almost caressing the cold metal until he followed it down to the mattress and then snatched up the corner of her duvet. 

Hermione couldn’t move, and she couldn’t speak. In the silence, Yaxley lifted the corner of her duvet and flicked it back on itself before reaching forward to grip her ankle. As soon as his heated flesh collided with hers, Hermione’s mind was assaulted with a tidal wave of images. They flicked by too quick at first, so fast she could barely process anything. Then her mind adjusted, and she knew. It was a scarcely recognisable montage of slick skin, screaming bliss, writhing passion and gentle caresses.

All of it was carnal beyond belief.

All of it… _was them_. 

She remembered things when his hands touched her, _sensual_ things. Hermione’s breath caught in her throat, and she closed her eyes as she tried to calm down. His hand trailed up her calf, and she gasped as more images filtered through her mind.

Hermione wrenched her eyes open, not wanting to keep her eyes off him for too long and Yaxley smirked at her, arching an eyebrow as if he had seen the very inside of her head. 

“If it wasn’t for what we do _now_ , that bit, where you remember, might be my favourite part of our time together.”

Yaxley stepped back from the end of the bed and Hermione moaned at the loss of his touch before her hand snapped to her mouth, stunned by her automatic response.

He smiled wickedly. “Or maybe that part.”

Yaxley didn’t break eye contact with her as he reached into his cloak pocket and pulled out a length of ribbon. It was so unexpected that Hermione was transfixed. His movements were slow and deliberate, and it reminded her of Muggle magic shows she had seen when she was little. The ribbon was wide and matte black, made from a material that appeared to be slightly corded. Yaxley held it out as if presenting it to her before trailing his fingers back to her ankle. Moving with unbelievable slowness, he looped the cord around the bottom of the bedpost and then around her ankle twice before tying it off in a perfect bow.

She should have felt panic, and yet all she could focus on was how _pretty_ it looked. Tied around her leg, the ribbon resembled the top of a hideously expensive sandal she would never have been able to afford.

Hermione didn’t move as he continued his ministrations, the fear from before, when she had first seen him, was still there, but it had morphed into something that made her stomach churn and coil. The images brought on by his touch had come with the realisation that he had been here before, many, many times. He had been _with her_ many, many times. 

_It explained why she had been so tired… But why? None of it made any…_

“Shhh,” he said calmly, interrupting her spiralling thoughts as he sat comfortably on the side of the bed. 

Yaxley raised her hand, the closest one to him and laid a soft kiss on each of her slim fingers before looping another length of the same ribbon around her wrist and securing it to the bed frame behind her. Hermione didn’t know why she was allowing him to continue except there was a familiarity to his presence, his movements, his voice. She couldn’t explain it, but she didn’t want him to stop. 

“You know all the answers,” he soothed before looking out of the window. “But not now, we don’t have long.” 

Hermione found herself blindly agreeing, she didn’t know what they had spoken about before, everything was so muddled, and as she felt his warm breath on her skin, she couldn’t think.

“I am here because you want me to be here, Hermione,” he said. His rich voice calmed the beats of her heart while the movements of his hands sped it up again. 

Her name fell from his lips like a rough caress, and Hermione felt new energy creep up from her toes to the roots of her hair. Yaxley was on the other side of her body now, and his breath was harsh against her throat. Hermione experimentally pulled against the ribbon, and once again, he answered her question before she’d had a chance to give it life.

“You can get out, you always can. But you don’t want to.” 

There seemed to be more to what he was saying, but Hermione couldn’t process another thought as he moved down the bed, shrugging off his cloak and looking down at her. His eyes travelled from assessing to satisfied, and he climbed forward, settling on his knees before her splayed legs. Only as he began lifting her nightshirt _torturously slowly_ did Hermione register how she had been laid out. Her mind didn’t feel self-conscious for long, soon all she could focus on was the chill creeping up her legs as he exposed more and more flesh to the room’s moonlight balm.

“Are you really here?” she asked, staring at the top of his head, _his gaze_ was rigidly fixed on the newly revealed parts of her body.

“Now you know that’s not logical little one,” he replied with a laugh in his voice. “You’re far too clever to think that.”

“I can feel you,” Hermione protested, and Yaxley leant forward to kiss the inside of her thigh, smiling against her skin. 

“I know you can; that’s the idea,” he said smugly. 

When the soft, white cotton had been pulled up to expose her practical cream knickers, Yaxley shifted again, this time moving to straddle her, though he held his considerable weight off her body. He lifted his shirt and waved a hand over her torso, muttering a spell; Hermione stiffened as the nightshirt vanished, leaving her utterly exposed to his gaze, his _hungry_ gaze.

The broad expanse of his chest was lean and yet muscular, and his skin was darker than her own. Hermione wanted to reach forward and touch him, and by the look in his eyes and the pulling of his lips, he knew. 

Yaxley lowered, laying a brief kiss against her lips before trailing down the column of her throat as his hands danced circles around her sides and over her hip bones. 

“Am I dreaming of you?” she moaned out breathy.

“Do you want to be dreaming me Hermione?” he muttered against the flesh of her breast, his tongue darting out to wet her nipple, exposing it to the biting cold of the room.

“Y… yes,” she stuttered.

“ _Good girl._ ”

Yaxley transferred his attention to her other breast, and Hermione whimpered as the cool metal of his belt buckle slithered across her core. With another wave of his hand, she could feel the skin on skin contact she had been craving, and when she looked down, it confirmed that his trousers were gone. The only thing separating them from each other were two thin pieces of fabric, which did nothing to obstruct the sensation when he rolled his hips to grind against her.

He leant up to pepper kisses over her jaw, then drew her earlobe between his teeth before swallowing her moans with his mouth. He ran an expert hand back over her sensitive flesh down her stomach and danced on the edge of her knickers with fingers that tapped out a maddening pattern.

Yaxley’s mouth broke away from her, and he looked down, raising an eyebrow in silent question as his fingers toyed with the frilly hem. 

“Please please please please,” she begged, desperate for more. 

Yaxley smirked. “Please what?” he asked, pulling back slightly when she tried to drag his mouth back to hers. 

“I don’t… I,” she responded nearly frantic with need. 

“You do know what, _Hermione,_ ” he purred, and the deliberate emphasis on her name triggered her memory.

“Please, _Reuben_ ,” she said as politely as he could, her mind full of relief. She might have been a long time out of school, but there was still something so tremendously satisfying about _knowing_ she had got the right answer. Approval danced in his eyes, and she felt her heart lighten.

“ _Good girl_ ” he replied, kissing the tip of her nose as he slid his calloused hand under the last bit of fabric on her body.

Hermione groaned in immediate relief as his skilled fingers connected with her heated core; he kept kissing her, a litany of open-mouthed caresses leaving blazing trails all over her skin. But he was torturing her as well. Every time she got close to release, he would back off only to start again. Before long, her skin was covered in a clammy sweat, and she was sure she would go mad if he did not increase the pressure. 

As she swore, loudly, he laughed a throaty teasing chuckle. He sat up, pulling his fingers away from her and kissing her forehead. Hermione groaned at the loss of contact and then struggled against the ribbons. 

“No little one,” he chastised softly, as he pressed her back down onto the mattress. Hermione looked up into his dark eyes that were hiding behind the hair falling towards her body. “I _need_ to feel you.”

Another subtle wave of his palm and the remaining fabric barriers keeping them apart were gone, Reuben wasted no time before pushing up onto his elbows and entering her as if he had done so a million times before. Hermione twisted her neck as she tried to absorb the feeling of finally being able to clench down on something as he hissed above her.

“Fuuuccckkk,” he breathed out against her neck, and Hermione felt tears well in the corners of her eyes.

Reuben began to move, full, consistent thrusts pounding her relentlessly into the mattress, but despite the harshness of his movements, he never broke eye contact. His eyes were as soft as they had been since he had appeared in her room. When she tightened around him, he closed his eyes just for a moment, before reopening them and kissing her so hard she was sure she would bruise her lips. His pace sped, and she felt herself pulling off the bed as her back arched.

“I...I...” she mumbled incoherently. 

“Do you want to come, Hermione?” he commanded. His voice was pushing her towards the edge just as much as the firm lines of his body. “Ask me nicely.”

“Yes… _please, Reuben_. I want… please, I want to come,” she panted out. 

“Let go,” he granted her swiftly, and Hermione screamed her release into the slick skin of his shoulder, he followed before laying on top of her laying kisses all over her face.

“ _Perfect girl._ ”

-/-/-/-

When their breathing had returned to normal, Reuben stood from the bed, gently removing her limbs from the black ribbon and running his warm hands over her ankles and wrists. He laid gentle kisses where she had been bound, bringing her back to life. 

Stepping back from her, Reuben pulled on his trousers and grabbed his wand before settling himself over her, trailing a hand over her flesh. His touch wasn’t sexual, not anymore, and he leant forward, healing the worst of some of her bruising. 

When he was done, he pulled the nightshirt back over her head and looked to the window as the light was beginning to creep in to reflect the dawning day.

“Are you leaving?” she asked, hating herself for letting the words fall from her lips. 

Reuben turned back around, his face was impassive, but his eyes looked intense as if he was willing her to understand. “I have too, but I will be back tomorrow.”

“Can’t tomorrow,” she murmured as she stretched out under the covers. As he moved away from the bed, she felt her eyes begin to get heavy.

“And why is that little love?” she thought she heard him whisper.

Hermione yawned and pushed her face into her pillows. “Staying at Harry’s.”

“Oh,” she heard as a word on the wind. “I don’t think so.”

* * *

As the sunlight broke through the open window in her bedroom, Hermione’s eyes fluttered open. Her body groaned as she attempted to move. _She felt so tired_. Reluctantly she got up from her bed and straightened the covers wondering if a hot shower and some buttery toast would be enough to put her back together before she was due to be at Grimmauld Place. 

When she reached the doorway, she stretched up, sighing as she felt sensitivity in her hips and ribs. Maybe it was time to go back to the Healers? They might not have been able to tell what was going wrong with her, but they could at least give her some pain relief potion and maybe some dreamless sleep?

As Hermione stepped forward to leave the room, she remembered her slippers and doubled back only to catch sight of something black at the end of her bed. It was a ribbon, thick and matte black. As she ran her fingers over its surface, she could feel its corded texture. 

_How did that get there?_

* * *

_And I feel like I’m being eaten  
_ _By a thousand million shivering furry holes  
_ And I know that in the morning  
 _I will wake up in the shivering cold  
_ And the spiderman is always hungry...


	3. TRACK 3: Monster

**TRACK 3**

[Hermione Granger x Fenrir Greyback]

_I shoot the lights out  
_ _Hide ’til it’s bright out  
_ _Whoa, just another lonely night  
_ _Are you willing to sacrifice your life?_

Monster / Kanye ft. Jay-Z, Rick Ross & Nicki Minaj [2010]

* * *

“I’m so sick of this tent! We can’t do this forever. At this point, we might fare better if we just handed ourselves straight over to Voldemort.”

For the first couple of seconds, no one moved. They created a void that filled with silence and panic, and it was heavy and oppressive. All Hermione could hear was the breathing of the others; it blocked out almost all other sounds. She couldn’t force her legs to move. Even if she could, there was nowhere to go.

The trio all eyed each other helplessly. Harry looked vaguely green. He had one hand clasped over his mouth as if he could take back what he had done, but it was too late for that. _He’d said it_. The taboo would have alerted everyone that was looking for them now.

The first pop of apparition was enough to break them from their shared state of intense shock, and finally, they ran, faster than they ever had before. The wind rushed in Hermione’s ears as she darted between the tall, slim trees.

The forest had become still all around them; she didn’t see a bird in the sky or an animal on the grass-covered ground. They knew like she did that a predator was coming, maybe more than one.

Long minutes later, Hermione’s legs were beginning to give way. Too much time spent in the tent with not enough food had left her energy reserves low, _too low for this._ Her rising panic wasn’t helping. She needed to plan. Should she keep pushing forward for the slim hope of escape? Or give up and keep something in ‘in the tank’ to give herself a chance to fight her way out of whatever danger they were getting into this time?

A sudden pop in front of her left her little choice; Hermione only had time to register a dark, imposing figure before she collided with it, her body rebounding off the shape that felt more like a wall than a person. It knocked her to the floor. The initial impact would have been enough to incapacitate her; unfortunately, she was swiftly followed onto the ground by Harry and Ron, who had somehow managed to converge on top of her at the same time.

Hermione winced as Ron attempted to move, in the process, he shoved an elbow into her protruding hip bone. A soft moan fell from her lips as Harry shunted her from the other side, and a low growl rolled over the clearing.

The trio’s tangled limbs froze, and Hermione was sure her heart stopped. She forced herself to her feet and found herself standing well within the considerable shadow of Fenrir Greyback.

His eyes were so intense that Hermione was sure she could feel his yellow-tinted gaze heating her skin. She took a step back, and he took one forward. Even in such close quarters, he was in pursuit. _Dogged_ , she would have called him. She knew he would never give up.

Fenrir closed his eyes and inhaled loudly, his chest inflating with the deep lung full of air. His mouth opened, exposing his jagged, sharp teeth, and Ron jerked forward, linking her hand with his and dragging Hermione partway behind him.

As Ron’s skin met hers, Greyback growled again. The sound was low with a heavy vibration that seemed to get trapped in Hermione’s chest. She didn’t have to be a wolf to detect the warning; Fenrir’s face was contorted as he fixed his savage expression to where her friend’s fingers lingered.

Fenrir stepped forward again; his body was so close now that Hermione could smell the leather of his worn jacket and hear the rasp in his breathing. There was no point fleeing; she knew that, his massive form was at least a head taller than her, maybe more, he would catch them in no time.

Her time was up.

Hermione’s heart started to beat faster, and she knew he had registered to it, his dark hooded eyes dropped to her chest with a raised, challenging brow.

Their wordless standoff was interrupted by shouts from what must have been the rest of his Snatcher group. Before Hermione could think of what to do, Fenrir had drawn his rarely seen wand and cast a spell she didn’t recognise. The air around them began to distort, and then a bubble appeared, inflating from where they were standing and finishing high above their heads and glistening in the setting sun. Hermione had never seen anything like it. The membrane-like orb was thick, iridescent and opaque, they could still see the woods outside its shimmering walls, but the image was blurred, and the sound muffled.

“What the hell?” Ron shouted as he darted to the side of the bubble and began pushing a hand into the apparently spongy barrier.

Fenrir looked back at them, still holding his wand aloft. “It would appear you have a choice to make,” he began roughly.

“We... We do?” Harry asked cautiously, and Fenrir grinned. It was a mean quirk of the side of his mouth that carried no warmth. Hermione knew enough to be wary of that expression.

“You make a bargain, _with me,_ ” he said pointedly, pressing a large hand against his chest, “and you get to leave. You don’t, and I hand you over to the rest of my… _associates._ ” The word fell from his lips with a good amount of disdain.

“We would never make a _bargain_ with you… you’re a _monster,_ ” Ron protested moving Hermione again until she was more squarely behind him.

Fenrir’s eyes fell on Hermione, his head tilted to the side to see until he could see her face from where she was obscured from his vision by Ron’s furious countenance. She felt like he was almost daring her to agree, taunting her to give her backing to Ron’s assessment.

_Tell me_ , Hermione could hear the words as clearly in her head as if he had spoken them. _Tell me I’m a monster._

Hermione poked at Harry’s shoulder, allowing Ron to lead this conversation was never going to end well.

“Oh, really?” The wolf responded, staring Ron down. He looked pleased. “Well then I…”

Whatever Fenrir would have said next was cut off as the muffled sound of shouts permeated the magically conjured bubble. One of the other Snatchers had found them. Hermione didn’t recognise the figure as he walked around, searching with his wand drawn. It was a bizarre sensation to watch the wizard look right through where they were standing.

Hermione had never really considered that Fenrir would be good with magic; she had so rarely seen him with a wand. He seemed to rely more on intimation and brute strength than magic. Though of course, _he_ was magic, to some extent. She wondered where he had learned it all. The spell he had cast had some serious cloaking power behind it. It was not comforting in any way to realise she had underestimated him.

A sharp tug pulled at her chest, and Hermione was sure she would pay for it.

Hermione’s fear made her detach emotionally from what was going on until she spotted the glint from the knife that the Snatcher was holding. It was unsheathed and ready to be used. The blade was short and thick, dipped in something that made the edges look darker than the main body. She felt Harry stiffen next to her, and Hermione knew he had seen it too.

However fatal wands could be, and they were, of course, deadly weapons, somehow the site of a blade was still more impactful. Whether it was because she had grown up in the Muggle world and learnt that fear at a young age, or maybe it was the up and personal nature of a small blade. You could end someone with a wand at a distance, like with a gun in some respects. To stab someone, you had to be prepared to see the whites of their eyes as they realised your intent, you had to be ready to be drenched in their blood. You had to be willing to reach into another person and drag their lives from them while they fought you with everything they had.

Hermione was capable of many things, the war had taught her she was a darker person than she’d ever thought possible, but she didn’t think she was capable of that.

Fenrir saw the direction of their gazes and smirked as the Snatcher eventually turned and walked off into the distance. “So what’s it to be?”

Hermione looked amongst them, running scenarios through her head, before taking half a step from behind Ron. “What do you want?” she asked, trying to keep the wobble from out of her voice.

“Hermione, no,” Harry whispered next to her, and she did her best to ignore him.

“I’m so glad you asked, _little one_ ,” he said. His words were smooth, and when he grinned, Hermione thought she could see every deadly tooth in his mouth.

“I will spare their lives,” he said, pointing to the boys behind her, “ _worthless as they are…_ if you give me yours,” he answered. Fenrir finished his proposition with a decidedly unsubtle perusal of her body, and Harry and Ron’s shouts of protest were immediate.

“... absolutely not…”

“... total nutcase...”

“... Merlin knows what he’ll do to you...”

“... he’s a _monster_ …”

The final word kicked her mind into gear; Fenrir’s eyes had not left hers since he had spoken, and she could see the challenge in them and the anger. Hermione knew what she was letting herself in for, but she had also noticed that knife. She knew the fate that could await them if they remained in the forest.

“Okay,” she whispered, and the boys yelled protestations abruptly stopped.

“Hermione what are you…” Harry began, his eyebrows were knotted, as he looked at her in disbelief.

Hermione turned to him and laid her hands on his face to force him to stop glaring at Fenrir long enough to listen to her, _really hear her_. “Harry, I have to do this, you _need_ to get out of here,” she turned her face to whisper in his ear. “The next one on the list.”

He looked at her, wide green eyes meeting brown and stared at her for a long while. “You can’t,” he pleaded hoarsely, but she could already hear the resignation in his tone.

“I have too,” Hermione reassured him, squeezing him tightly. “I’m so sorry, Harry, there isn’t another way.”

His nod, when it finally came, was heavy, just one jerk of his head against her shoulder and when he pulled away, his eyes were fixed on the ground.

“No,” Ron called, looking between them both with an expression of betrayal. “No, no, no.”

“Harry?” Hermione said beseechingly, and the-boy-who-would-continue-to-live stepped forward and grabbed Ron’s arm, before taking one last long look at her then apparating away.

* * *

The moment the pop of apparition had dissipated Hermione made to start reasoning with Fenrir, but from his demeanour, it was already too late. He dropped the enchantment encasing them in their sphere and rushed forward immediately. He gripped her roughly, one of his large hands finding their way onto each of her arms then he lifted her clean off the ground and backed her against a nearby tree.

Hermione gasped as he pulled up the bottom of her tatty jumper and his rough, broad hands gripped at the scant flesh of her waist. He moved as if desperate, tugging the cotton out of his way until both his palms were pressed fully against her stomach. Panting heavily, he ran one of his hands to the top of her jumper, savagely tugging at the collar to expose her shoulder. With the new flesh revealed, Fenrir laid a trail of wet kisses and soft bites indiscriminately, scratching her smooth skin with the stubble at his jaw until his mouth connected to the base of her neck. His warm tongue circled and then laved the small scar he found there.

“Too slim,” he growled into her neck. “You were supposed to contact me.”

Fenrir tugged at the belt and fastenings of her worn jeans until they were open, pulling them just far down her legs before he gripped her thighs to hoist her up against him.

“What is wrong with you?” he barked. “What if I hadn’t been part of the group? You would have been killed,” he demanded.

Hermione saw the fire in his eyes but also the worry, and it made her heart clench. _When was the last time he had slept?_ Settling herself back against the wood she raised her arms and wrapped them around his neck, gently tugging on the ends of his long hair as she attempted enveloping him in her, letting him calm by absorbing her scent.

“You stink of Potter and Weasley,” he growled petulantly, though, despite his violent protest, he didn’t move his nose from her hair.

Hermione traced her hand up the back of his neck and then pushed her splayed fingers into his hair. Fenrir jerked forward and panted into her hair. She could feel a thrumming under his skin, it spoke of his need and his unease, he needed her, _badly_.

Not moving from her embrace, Fenrir reached down to pull the bottoms of her jeans from off her legs before he undid his own that were already riding low on his hips.

He lifted his head to look at her before he took his warm hands off her flesh and in one smooth movement, ripped the entire front of her jumper open, from tatty collar to chewed up hem.

“Fenrir,” she chastised shrilly, tugging at both sides of her now ruined top. “There was a zip,” she remonstrated.

“Don’t care,” he replied hotly, dropping his lips to kiss down the column of her throat.

Hermione opened her eyes to cool herself from the sensation, and it was as if a bucket of cold water fell over her as she remembered their surroundings.

“We need to get out of here,” she said, as her eyes darted around, looking for potential dangers.

“Everyone’s gone,” he protested fiercely.

“Fenrir,” she pushed.

He halted his heated ministrations to look at her. “Do you think I would let anyone see you…. or hear you?” he asked intently, his eyes burrowing into hers. “Do you think I would let anyone get even the smallest glance of your skin?”

“No,” she conceded.

He grunted in response and pushed forward to rest his head on her forehead. “Look at me,” he commanded.

As she did what he asked, their eyes connected and with a heavy rock forward, Fenrir tugged her knickers to the side and entered her swiftly. Hermione whimpered from the rough intrusion, it had been a long time since she had been with him, with anyone, and her body protested before it remembered how this dance went.

Hermione saw his jaw twitch, and he grunted sheathing himself completely before stalling abruptly. Fenrir paused his, his whole body static as his eyes bore into hers. His expression was assessing and expectant, and she knew what he was waiting for, what he _needed_ from her.

Hermione leant forward the small amount she could, given she was pinned so forcefully by his arms, and laid a gentle kiss on his full bottom lip.

“Thank you,” she swallowed, “Mate.” The word still felt experimental on her tongue, but the effect on him was immediate.

Fenrir inhaled fiercely, closing his eyes and shaking his head before smashing his lips against hers with bruising force. His body came to life as he jerked roughly within her. His hands never stopped moving; he was seemingly trying to rub himself over every part of it. Hermione didn’t think anything of it, and she was used to his ways by now.

-/-/-/-

_The night the Death Eaters broke into Hogwarts was chaos, it was also the night Hermione had seen Fenrir Greyback for the first time. Determined to help and do what they could to protect the school, herself and the same group of students who had fought together just the year before led the way into the corridors hoping to be able to hold the attackers back until the Order came through with reinforcements._

_Hermione had somehow gotten separated from her friends and was being pursued down a corridor by the hulking form of Thorfinn Rowle. Suddenly she heard a commotion at the end of the hall; Greyback was there. Hermione had never seen him before, and the fabled werewolf was more imposing in the flesh than she could have believed possible. He was tall, not as tall as Thorfinn, but not far off, and his body was strong and intimidating. His eyes were intense, and his dark matted hair fell to his shoulders._

_He sent the blond packing; they fought for a little while, but ultimately Rowle left scowling. When it was just them in the corridor, Hermione thought she was about to die; she couldn’t see how else the night would end._

_Fenrir was in front of her in a flash, but he regarded her in a way she didn’t understand. As a crash sounded from behind, he unexpectedly scooped her up and carried her into an abandoned classroom. As Fenrir laid a set of complicated-looking wards, Hermione had slunk off to hide under one of the desks, cowering to make herself as small as possible._

_It hadn’t taken him long to find her; Hermione hadn’t expected her hiding place to be infallible; she was trying to delay the inevitable. Without warning, Fenrir was under the table, right next to her. His too big form had taken up all of the limited space. Fenrir had tugged at the fingers that covered her face and snarled at the blood on her skin. Hermione hadn’t breathed the entire time he held one of her small hands in his large ones, perplexed as slowly healed all of her cuts and bruises, with gentle touches that he seemed as unsure of as she was._

_In the chaos, he had explained and demonstrated their bond. She hadn’t understood, Hermione had cried and fought against him, but she had felt it. Like an invisible hook that had been buried deep within her had found its anchor buried inside of him._

_She hadn’t believed, but she had felt it._

-/-/-/-

“You’re mine,” Fenrir groaned against the skin of her collarbone and Hermione nodded, she was. At her confirmation, he swore lowly and bit down on the flesh of her neck as he finished inside her. The look on his face, the pure unadulterated, relief tinged bliss, was enough to make Hermione follow him.

They remained linked for a heady moment before he pulled out of her with a sigh and started putting her to rights. He mended her overly worn clothes with a wry, satisfied smile. When Hermione was fully dressed he reversed their positions, languidly leaning against the tree he had devoured her against before pulling her to him, burying his face in her neck and laying gentle kisses against the mark he had left there months before.

“Time to get you home,” he demanded. “The pack are going to have a fit when they see the state of you.”

Hermione tried to pull on her jumper to make herself look more presentable. It wasn’t going to work.

“It’s nothing,” she responded airily, not wanting him to get into one of his moods. “A decent night sleep and a home-cooked meal, and I’ll be back to rights.”

“More like a week’s worth of meals,” Fenrir grumbled, pinching her hips. “No more running now.”

Hermione nodded meekly and averted her gaze until he placed his fingers under her chin to drag her eyes back up. It was a sign that he wasn’t furious, which relieved her more than it should have done. The dominant emotion left in her chest was guilt.

“Was it essential, the pretence?” she questioned.

She thought of Harry and Ron torturing themselves in ignorance, but then, Harry had given in so quickly could he? Could he have known what was going on?

Hermione had wanted to tell Harry when she found out about Fenrir, but she had been too scared. She worried he would think she had switched allegiances, or that he couldn’t trust her anymore.

“There was no pretence, I gave you all a choice, and you said you would be mine,” he answered smugly.

Hermione nearly rolled her eyes, but instead, she smiled. There was so much to think about, so much they still had to do to make them all safe. She would give herself a couple of hours of relishing Fenrir’s warmth before she went back to studying.

She pushed herself into Fenrir’s chest and nuzzled against his soft shirt. “Hadn’t I already done that?” she teased. “Agreed to be yours?”

“No,” Fenrir replied, shaking his head, his expression now serious. “You _submitted_ , you accepted me and the bite, but then you left… and I let you.”

“I need to help them,” Hermione replied weakly, and Fenrir’s arms tightened around her.

“I know,” he growled, but there was no heat to it now. “But you _will_ come with me.”

He had meant it as an order, but there was a question in his tone that made Hermione’s heart constrict. Being away from your Mate for any period of time was no easy thing. Fenrir was not a man used to not getting his way, and yet he had done it, for her. She wasn’t sure he would do so again. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to.

Hermione looked up into his amber eyes. “I’ve made my choice, Fenrir.”

* * *

_I-I crossed the line-line  
_ _and I’ll-I’ll let God decide-cide_  
_I-I wouldn’t last these shows  
_ _so I-I am headed home_


	4. TRACK 4: Every Breath You Take

**TRACK 4**

[Hermione Granger x Antonin Dolohov]

_Every breath you take  
_ _Every move you make  
_ _Every bond you break  
_ _Every step you take  
_ _I’ll be watching you_

Every Breath You Take / The Police [1983]

* * *

Hermione turned to the bored-looking teenage cashier and handed over the Muggle coins she had grabbed from her _second_ purse. It had become something of an art over the years always to make sure she was using the _right_ money. It helped that right now, she was very aware of _where_ she was.

Hermione slid down the counter to bag up the rest of her shopping. She wanted to get out of the way of a frazzled looking lady who was balancing a full basket of shopping and a determined toddler, who was doing his best to secure a lolly into his chubby grasp.

As she shook out the first paper bag, Hermione felt _it_ again. This time it was across her cheek. Her shoulders tensed. It was a tingling, prickling sensation that crept over her skin like an invisible finger. There was all the warning in the world in that unseen caress.

Quick as a flash, Hermione spun on her heel, darting her head to search the scene for someone with nefarious intent, but there was no one there.

_There never was_.

Hermione turned back to the counter, and her movements were slower this time. She busied her trembling fingers with her shopping and tried to keep her breathing even. Too many times when she’d had similar experiences, she had attracted the attention of those around her. She didn’t want to be forced to attempt an explanation.

The baby by the tills looked at her curiously, and Hermione managed a slightly strained smile in return. She glanced at the people around the shop and let herself be calmed. She was far from on her own, even if she couldn’t tell them anything she was feeling.

Hermione knew full well just how crazy she sounded. She had seen the worried look in her friend’s eyes all too often, the pained expressions aimed her way at her jumpy behaviour, or grave concern raised when she would stop to scan the room wherever she went.

Squaring her shoulders, Hermione grabbed the now full paper bags and with a wave to the disinterested boy behind the counter, she headed for the door.

* * *

The almost deserted street was still warm, despite the hour, and Hermione made the spur of the moment decision to walk home, or well, back to the farmhouse. Apparating was always a bit risky in the tiny Muggle village. As the evening was so pleasant, Hermione found she couldn’t be bothered to go meandering down the small network of alleys that would provide the only safe coverage to use magic.

The lack of magic in the last few weeks had been something of a relief, a homecoming of sorts. As her time at Hogwarts had continued, Hermione had spent less and less time at home, with her family, in the Muggle world. The war had quickly become her priority, keeping Harry safe the only thing she focused on. Now with her parents permanently staying in Australia, without any clue who she was, it felt like honouring them to re-immerse herself, at least for a time.

Hermione smiled and waved to the locals as she passed by; Mr Stonebridge, who ran the bank, Charlotte, who waitressed in the cafe, the list went on. Three weeks had been plenty of time to get to know _everyone_ in town. That Hermione had enjoyed the familiarity had been a surprise to her at first. When she had drawn up a list of potential places to escape to Little Hampton had been at the very bottom of her pile. Hermione had assumed that the _curious_ locals would get on her nerves, as it turned out they weren’t nosy at all, well, _interested_ she would call it. Despite herself, Hermione found it comforting. Staying in such a big house all alone had left her longing for company from time to time, company she quickly found as soon as she descended the hill into the cafe or one of the simply styled restaurants on the main strip.

The people were warm and courteous, and the depth of association seemed to be totally on her terms, just how Hermione liked it. Apart from a few stop bys and introductions in her first few days, no one came to the house, which meant Hermione was left to get on with her work. Though she had added a few, _light_ , Muggle repelling charms, just in case. Although most of what she was undertaking was research-based, she did have a few experiments to run, nothing dangerous but not something that she would quickly explain to an unexpected guest either.

Her pace was quick due to the weight of the shopping in her arms, and before long, Hermione found herself at the white wooden fence that lined her rental property. Ginny had laughed her arse off when she saw the house Hermione had picked and all of its ‘homely features’. Compared to the sleek lines and metal finishes of her flat in Hogsmeade this place was so different.

_But that had been the point, hadn’t it?_

After the war, the trio plus Ginny had all moved into Grimmauld Place, but Hermione had stayed less than two months. She loved all of her friends dearly and in a way that was the problem, so much of her life had been devoted to Harry’s needs that she felt it was essential to get some separation from him, enough for her to _feel out_ her own life.

Hermione had accepted a position within the Department of Mysteries and had thrown herself into the role with gusto, quickly finding her rhythm and relishing every moment of _finally_ working amongst a group of peers that were as passionate about the quest to ‘know more’ as she was. As part of her contract, employees could take off up to two months a year to pursue their own research projects, provided that the scope was signed off by the Department Head and would be seen as ‘beneficial to the Magical Population’.

Hermione had not anticipated putting in request quite so soon, but, as it turned out, her manager had been impressed with both the speed and quality of her work and had strongly suggested she apply. It hadn’t been difficult to come up with a topic; in fact, narrowing her options was a much more challenging task.

Her approved request had come back almost immediately and Hermione, desperate to impress as always, had taken it upon herself to rent a place far away from the distractions of town, to commit herself to the report entirely. One more week and she could return to her office safe in the knowledge that she had done her best. Or maybe slightly beyond it, if the way she was pushing herself paid off. Most of the fact-finding was completed, now she just needed to pull it all together in a cohesive form.

As she jostled the bags cradled in her arms, Hermione felt a subtle press against her awareness, and she reflexively turned her head to the side, scanning out of the corner of her eye. The light was failing now, but she could still see clearly the whole way around her.

_There’s nothing there Hermione,_ she told herself, but her mental reassurance did nothing to quell her body’s reaction.

Hermione walked up the paved drive shaking her head. She opened the large blue door awkwardly, not wanting to put down the bags. The ground was still wet from the earlier inclement weather which would have soaked them through.

Depositing the bags in the kitchen, Hermione walked straight out of the rickety back door and into the overgrown garden, having just remembered she’d left a book and some notes out there earlier. It wasn’t unusual, since living on her own Hermione had gotten used to depositing books and stacks of parchment all over the place so she could make a note whenever she felt like it. While back in her flat, she attempted to keep the living room and kitchen in some order in case someone popped around, she hadn’t bothered since she had got here.

Standing out in the expansive garden, Hermione felt a shiver crawl up her spine. It languidly crept before settling on the back of her neck. Hermione shut her eyes and fought back tears.

_Would it ever stop? Would she ever stop feeling like someone was watching her? Was this the beginning? Was she losing her faculties?_

The war had cast a long shadow, and Hermione had never got over the feeling of needing to look over her shoulder. She worried - _a lot_ \- that she would end up as jaded and paranoid as Moody had been. Would she be screaming about ‘constant vigilance’ before long?

Against her better judgement, Hermione had decided that when she got back to reality, it was time to give in and go and see a Healer. Harry had found the process beneficial, and if they had managed to get someone as stubborn as him to open up, maybe they would have a chance with her?

Stomping her foot in frustration, Hermione gathered up all of the previously abandoned parchment and went back into the kitchen to unload her shopping. She had brought more than she would typically as she was determined not to give in to any temptation to leave the house for the weekend. She wanted to get a headstart on the report to accommodate the number of times she would like to edit it before handing it over. She had already spoken to Mr Green from the General Store to let him know not to expect her, in a town this small she would only end up with knocks on the door if she were unexpectedly absent.

* * *

The night passed like so many others had before it. Hermione made herself a small dinner and worked for several hours before floo calling Harry to update him on the minor goings-on in her life. He was due for early completion of his training programme in a few weeks, and Hermione could not have been happier for him. She disconnected the floo at the end of the call, and after hesitating for a few moments, she shut it off completely. She wouldn’t need it for the next few days, and if she left it accessible, she would only end up cursing herself when Ginny or Luna called idly, a distraction she could lose hours to.

Hermione looked up over the mantel, and saw the time was getting on for eleven-thirty and so she made up her mind to have a shower and get into bed before the chill of the night set in. The heating in the farmhouse was old and temperamental, serviced by creaky pipes and a reluctant water tank. If she wasn’t in bed until the early hours, she would feel the whole house get cold, and it would take forever for her toes to warm no matter how many blankets she threw on the bed.

Ascending the narrow staircase, Hermione collected up the scraps of parchment she found along the way and was going to put them in the study, but she paused at the door. She flipped the last piece over in her hand again, while gripping the doorknob.

_No_ , Hermione thought resolutely, if she took them into the bedroom she could have one more read through before she fell asleep, those few moments before she committed herself to slumber could often produce her best thoughts. Resolved, Hermione removed her palm from the handle.

Shivering, she reached up to close the hallway window and stepped into the bathroom. This room had ultimately sold Hermione on the property. Despite the design of the overall house not being in line with her _personal aesthetic_ , whoever had lived here had put a lot of time into the bathroom selection. The piece de resistance was the large shower block in the corner; it could have fit five people at a time, not that Hermione had any idea of wanting that but, she did enjoy the four separate shower heads that were mounted on the walls. Washing here was a new form of luxury.

After getting the water running, Hermione quickly pulled off the practical clothing she had been wearing that day and ran out through the corridor into her room to put it in the laundry basket before moving back into the now slightly steamy bathroom. It didn’t matter how long she had been living on her own; it still felt odd and weirdly exhibitionist to walk around naked, and Hermione couldn’t help but give in to the desire to run whenever she did so.

At the first touch of water, her thick curls slicked against her head, and Hermione stood out of the spray to reach for the shampoo and began the lathering process. She didn’t wash her hair regularly, because of it taking so long to dry, so she took her time coaxing the thick gel through her mop. The menial task occupying her hands allowed her mind to clear the perpetual loop of facts and source documents it had been chewing over for the last few hours.

Just as she moved back under the spray, Hermione realised with a jolt that she didn’t remember opening the window in the hall. The water suddenly felt frigid.

* * *

At the end of the battle, while Hogwarts stood proud despite the evident damage, Antonin watched his Lord fall. He had fought on while those that had stood alongside him for more than half his life fell too. Yet, he remained.

Antonin wasn’t sure how many others had survived that day, it was already painfully obvious that none he cared about had made it. He stayed long enough to see the Aurors begin to arrive, and then he had gotten out of there.

He would have rather died than go to Azkaban again.

Antonin had been planning on going back to Russia; the last few months had been filled with activity, but he had still found time to create a relatively decent exit strategy, ‘just in case’ he had said to himself. As the Dark Lord had begun to unravel before their eyes, he had feared this, and yet, it still hadn’t seemed likely that it would really happen. The Order had seemed so disorganised, so weak. Then, they had won.

As Antonin had been moving at pace through the crumbling castle grounds to find somewhere he could apparate, he came across a scene that, despite his urgency, halted him in his tracks. He saw Hermione Granger. He hadn’t seen her at such close quarters since he had cursed her at the Department of Mysteries. She was sitting in one of the smaller walled courtyards, all by herself, battered and bloodied, and looking over to the lake.

She didn’t see him, which was just as well.

While Granger may have been still, there was nothing serene about her, a turmoil of the most profound kind seemed to permeate the very air around her, bleeding from her small frame into the war-torn grass. Antonin hadn’t stayed long; his mind had _yelled_ at him to keep moving, and he had almost started when he realised he was hesitating. Shaking himself, he had run the rest of the way to Hogsmeade, apparating far away before anyone detected his presence.

Over the next few months, he thought about Granger and her blank, yet intense expression often. Antonin supposed obsessional behaviour was nothing new for him; he had been following his Lord as if he had been his own personal due North since his late teens. Maybe _she_ just filled a hole that was too established to be overridden.

Antonin was reading a book one afternoon when he felt his arm prickle, and his heart almost stopped. When he looked down, he watched as the entrenched black ink of his dark mark faded to a dull grey.

_Now he had nothing._

Antonin idly wondered later, as he climbed into bed, if the mark that he had left on _her_ was still there. Maybe, if it remained, he still had something after all.

He would have to find out.

* * *

When he first started following _her,_ Antonin did something he had never done before at any point in his life; he went into a situation _entirely without_ planning or preparation. He had decided momentarily to give in to his unceasing desires and as such, had grabbed a robe and apparated before he could change his mind.

She wasn’t challenging to track. Even though it was now months after the war, the _Golden Trio_ were still hot property in the press. Yet, instead of joining the party circuit or relegating herself to a life of after-dinner speaking, Granger joined the Ministry, working in the Department of Mysteries.

Where he had marked her.

_A coincidence?_

Antonin didn’t believe in coincidences.

Antonin saw her the very first day he went looking. _Hermione_ was leaving from the main exit of a building that represented everything he loathed. She was carrying a large bag full of parchment and was cloaked in soft lavender robes that highlighted the light flush on her cheeks; she smiled at someone leaving at the same time.

Antonin enjoyed the expression, and even if it hadn’t been meant for him, he drew in the warmth that radiated from her tiny frame hungrily. Absently he found himself smiling in her direction in return.

That night he reviewed every scrap of information he could find on Hermione Granger, he realised he didn’t know the girl at all, outside of a few utterances from others and his _limited_ interactions with her, and that wouldn’t do at all.

_Who was she underneath the persona?_

He would have to find out.

* * *

It only took a few weeks for Antonin to lock down her entire schedule, Hermione was a creature of routine, something they had in common. She liked to go to the same places for lunch, ordered the same sandwiches; she went to the bookstore each Thursday and always set herself a budget, which she would then amusingly give herself leave to ignore. She preferred vanilla scented bath products to anything else, though, when she was looking for a change, she would pick up something with pink grapefruit or pomegranate essence. And, most apparent to him, was that her _whole life_ was dedicated to either her job or her best friends.

Antonin deduced that Hermione had fallen into the habit of putting herself last. She seemed to prefer sitting on the sidelines and contributing to other people’s happiness. She took so little for herself that it made him angry. _What about her wants and needs?_ Could _he_ make her more selfish? Or would he be willing to have that selflessness continue as long as _he_ benefitted?

He would have to find out.

* * *

As the months went on, Antonin grew bolder. It was no longer enough to see Hermione from afar; _he had to get closer_. Before he would have waited across the street as she meandered about town, now he followed her into cafes, disguised of course, at least most of the time. He would sit a few tables away and watch her eat, distracted as she always was, either by a book or a piece of parchment she would be scribbling on.

That was when Hermione started to sense him; Antonin hadn’t been close enough before, but now she would occasionally spin around, or her hand would suddenly move to grip the back of her neck. The discovery was pleasing; he was _glad_ that the war experience had given Hermione good reflexes. That she was aware of her surroundings meant she could protect herself. More selfishly, he liked being able to affect her. He liked to know that _he_ put goosebumps on her creamy flesh.

How close could he get undetected he wondered?

He would have to find out.

* * *

Despite his _habit_ of following Hermione Granger increasing to at least three instances a week, Antonin still considered himself relatively detached from the activity. She just _interested_ him.

_I can give this up anytime I like_ , he told himself.

That all changed the day he watched her leave her flat in a tight-fitting pencil skirt and heels to go to work. Hermione _never_ wore anything like that. To most people, it would have seemed like a run of the mill outfit, but it was so out of character for her, Antonin convinced himself she could have only worn it to be provocative. He followed her to work and then paced back and forward on the pavement outside, cursing that he could not follow and find out what was going on.

Anger made him break into her flat. He didn’t have a choice.

Her wards weren’t difficult for someone like him, and his mind whispered that it was deliberate. _She could have kept him out if she wanted too._ Antonin searched through her things, looking for a sign of a man, something he missed, but there was nothing. Eventually, he found a calendar and a stack of parchments relating to her job. On the day’s date in big letters was lunch with Ginny Weasley.

Antonin thought back over conversations that he had overhead Hermione have with, or about the redhead, then he settled on it, Ginny was always complaining about Hermione’s clothes, she must have dressed up to make an effort for her friend. He shook his head as the anger leaked from his pores, but he still didn’t leave. Now he was there, he couldn’t resist going through her things.

When he came across her employment contract, an idea came to him. _Could he go that far?_

He would have to find out.

* * *

It hadn’t taken much to convince her boss, just a little compulsion, a few whispered words and a bit of magical insistence. It was illegal, of course, but that kind of definition did not apply to him anymore. Antonin had lived outside of the law for so long it would have been pointless to start becoming concerned now. He tried to convince himself that he had done it for _her_ and at least on some level he really had. He knew that it would make her happy to be away from work and _researching_ , but the illusion wouldn’t quite sit.

Now that Hermione was here, _alone_ and firmly within his grasp… _he slipped_. Antonin couldn’t help himself, he had been watching her for so long, and he had gotten _so close,_ but as yet, he’d had no opportunity to interact with her. Here was his chance. It was a reckless venture and one he shouldn’t have even considered, but in a town of new faces, what was one more?

Disguising his features and dressing as a Muggle tourist, Antonin walked into the cafe Hermione was having lunch in, only this time he didn’t skulk in the shadows. He had seen her chatting to various people in the time she had been there, animated conversations with strangers wasn’t her usual style, though he supposed she must have been a little lonely at the house she had picked. The thought that she might welcome his advances kept him up at night. He ordered some food and then made his way over to her table.

“I’m sorry, is this seat taken?” he asked, pointing to the chair tucked under the table opposite her, and doing his best to mask his accent. He had considered spelling his voice, but Antonin found he didn’t want to. If she couldn’t see his real face, she could at least hear his words unhindered.

Her dainty hand whipped up to cover her mouth while she chewed quickly.

_She was hurrying_ to answer _him_.

“No, please go ahead,” she kindly offered before going back to her pasta.

“Are you from here?” he enquired as he settled himself into the easily given seat.

She looked up at him, and her warm brown eyes being on his face, disguised or not, was electrifying. Hermione shook her head, and her brown curls danced in her loose ponytail.

“No, just visiting for a while, you?”

“Just passing through” he replied looking around. “It seems nice here, though. I wouldn’t mind hanging around for a few days.”

Hermione courteously told him about all the attractions that were readily available in the small town, never once realising that the only one he was interested in was sitting in front of him. Antonin threw a few kind compliments into his speech, gentle flirting at most and delighted in her flush, _her innocence_. Hermione left too soon, excusing herself to get back to work at the farmhouse on the top of the hill.

It wasn’t enough. _Would it ever be?_

He would have to find out.

* * *

Antonin watched from outside the small General Store as Hermione brought her shopping. He saw her whip around as she detected his presence and tried to contain his broad smile. He batted away the urge to help her carry the heavy, awkward, brown paper bags.

_Soon_ , he told himself, _just a little while longer_.

When Hermione went inside the house she had rented, Antonin walked around to the back garden. It hadn’t taken her long to establish a routine in her new environment. Hermione worked outside in the mornings with a big mug of tea. Then she would remember those lost parchments at the end of the day and come and collect them.

Once the back door clicked and Hermione came outside, Antonin allowed himself a few moments to gaze at her before walking around to the side of the house and with a quick spell he opened the upstairs hall window. There was a handy trellis by the wall that would be all he would need.

Antonin knew she wouldn’t come upstairs until much later in the evening and so he waited until he could hear the backdoor groan closed and then he made it into the house, as quietly as he could. Making quick work of assessing the upstairs, he crept inside her study and decided to wait. There was plenty there to occupy him after all.

Antonin could barely contain himself as the hours wore on, and when the old pipes that lined the house groaned he finally stood, stretching himself out before opening the door and making his way down the upper-level corridor. Standing outside the bathroom, he concentrated on the sound of the running water, hoping it would calm his hammering heart.

As he placed his hand on the doorknob, Antonin could feel a slight heat in the metal from where it must have been gathering warmth on the other side, and holding his wand aloft he took a deep breath and turned the handle.

_Was he ready for this?_

He would have to find out.


	5. TRACK 5: Abracadabra

**TRACK 5**

[Hermione Granger x Felix Mulciber (Mulciber)]

_Every time you call my name  
_ _I_ _heat up like a burnin' flame  
_ _Burnin' flame full of desire  
_ _Kiss me baby, let the fire get higher_

Abracadabra / Steve Miller Band [1982]

* * *

Felix Mulciber dragged the slumped, broken figure he had been sent to _persuade_ from the burning house. There wasn't any struggle left in his captive, so there was no way he would have gotten out of the inferno under his own steam.

The man in his grasp grumbled a little as Felix pulled him roughly down the front steps, but the Death Eater paid it no mind. He could already feel the heat on his back which was infinitely improving his mood.

Felix supposed to a casual observer he might look like a have-a-go hero, a nighttime guardian that had swept in to save the man from certain death. The thought made him smile crookedly. His intentions were far from honourable. He had set the fire himself after all. He'd only bought the man outside as he wanted to watch the orange glow reflected in the whites of his eyes as his family home burnt.

After all, if you were going to send a message, you might as well make sure you were clear in your delivery.

Felix dropped the body with a careless thud once they had cleared the shadow of the building and stood back to watch the flames consume the house. The vivid golden tendrils forcibly licked at the old fashioned sash windows on the upper level. Felix laughed along with the creaking of timber as the roof succumbed to the flame.

He had always liked fire; he loved its heat, its glow, and the certainty of its destructive power. Felix supposed that passion was his birthright, after a fashion.

_Fortunes flame_ his Mother had called him, the child they had never thought they would have, their dark little miracle. Through miscarriage, after miscarriage, they had kept the faith and eventually, he was the result. People would say his parents overindulged him for that, though the most astute among them might have realised that the scion of house Mulciber would only ever have gone one way.

Felix was destined to forge his own path, though instead of sweat and toil he chose carnage to beat the way ahead.

His parents were respected amongst the elite, but that respect was born of fear, not of close association. They did everything for their own pleasure, ignored all advice they disagreed with and rallied against anyone that stood in their way. People would often mumble that they were little more than heathens, but they didn't care, his parents never had, one would have burnt the world down for the other's amusement if the mood had so struck.

Felix had an unconventional upbringing, left to run riot in many cases, and he wasn't one to disappoint. Riot he brought, then and now.

All that indulgence _should_ have left him with a pretty warped sense of right and wrong, but it hadn't. Though the line that separated them, the one he had crossed so many years before, was no longer visible, he remained _acutely_ aware of the wrongs he had committed.

_Was there a point in atoning when you knew you had only just begun?_

_Was there a point in remorse when you knew you did not regret a single moment?_

The beaten man on the floor groaned, and Felix turned away from the warming glow with an animated sigh. He frowned at the wizard who had disturbed him, and he delivered a swift, deep kick to the man's rib cage before he reached into his inside pocket for a familiar box, his lips twisting into a smirk. Sadly, before his fingers could get to his prize, his forearm convulsed and his mark burned torturously into his flesh.

Felix swore loudly at the thought of the interrupted scene he would leave behind. There was nothing else for it, with one last look back at the devastation in front of him he allowed the pull of apparition to take him to his Master's side.

* * *

Crammed amongst his peers in the grandiose study at Malfoy Manor, Felix stood towards the back watching the display. He had no desire to force his way to the front. He did not wish to be close to the pageantry of the usual sycophants throwing themselves at their Lord's feet. Felix served his Master best in the field, not schmoozing in back rooms begging from crumbs.

As the meeting wore on, Felix picked up the side of his cloak and pulled the collar across his face so he could inhale the clinging smell of the acrid smoke from earlier. It calmed him in a way that nothing else could.

Only one thing caught his attention in all that passed, which was the news, gleefully shared, that _Hermione Granger_ had been captured and was currently _residing_ , as his Lord had put it, in the dungeon downstairs. Felix fought back the roll of his eyes; Lucius may have _repeatedly_ referred to him as 'too unstable' to be trustworthy, and yet this censor was from a man that had a custom-built prison in the basement of his home. The Mulcibers would never have condoned such a thing; their cells were confined to the grounds where you wouldn't have to suffer through the noise of detainees at dinner. To Felix that was a better show of breeding than anything the Malfoys might have ever aspired to.

Despite his growing irritation, Felix's interest had been peaked, and he knew he would have to satisfy this _new craving_ before moving on. The girl had been elusive for months. After the trio had broken free from capture, despite numerous sightings, they had so far been unable to apprehend her.

Felix wanted to go down and see the girl. Inferior as she obviously was, something about her methods spoke to him; shooting Potter in the face to obscure his identity to fool witless Snatchers and polyjuicing herself as Bellatrix at the bank made him take notice. There was a daring there that he might have admired had it come from anyone else.

Felix wondered how they had finally got her this time.

When the rest of the masked figures left, Felix saw his chance. He doubted he would be the only one among them desirous of visiting the Mudblood. Dolohov hadn't been the same since he'd first heard she was alive after he had cursed her at the Department of Mysteries. It was best Felix went now, by the end of the week she was unlikely to be very _responsive_.

Felix pondered over his approach as he started down the stairs, _the staging_ was imperative to him, he believed everything in life should be thought of in terms of a timely, well-executed performance, set up in a certain way for maximum effect. He liked to reel people in, to have them second guess the level of danger they were in. Sometimes he enjoyed blinding them with kindness before letting the conjured illusion drop, revealing the smirking detachment in the face of their inevitable death.

He found her quickly as the cells were relatively empty; they didn't tend to keep _guests_ long. She was sitting towards the back of the dirty space, with her legs folded up underneath her and hands resting palms down on her knee caps. She looked to be mumbling to herself, and Felix wondered if she were praying. He had seen Mudbloods and Muggles do that sometimes. To him, it was another sign of their inferiority. Her false God wouldn't save her from him or anything else she had coming her way.

Felix leant back on his heels surveying the environment. At the first click of his worn boot against a hard stone, he noticed her flinch. Despite her closed eyes and calm demeanour, she had sensed his arrival. He allowed himself a small smile and then reached into his pocket for the box he was denied before. He opened it, pulling out a single rectangle of reinforced parchment and slid the card between his fingers before flicking his wrist and launching it at Hermione Granger.

_This setup was one of his favourites._

"Pick up the card," he commanded causally.

She opened her eyes, meeting his gaze blankly before he nodded pointedly towards the parchment that had landed in front of her feet.

"Pick up the card, and tell me _where_ you would like it _attached_ to your body," he continued in the same unaffected tone, as if he were asking her if she would like a drink.

Her small hands reached forward without a visible tremor and gripped the offered object. She turned it over in her palm, revealing the magically moving image of _The Tower_. Flames danced around the rounded turret, and people plunged to their deaths over the backdrop of cruel lightning.

"It's usually the last thing I do when I'm finished with you," he explained. "By that point, it's almost a mercy, the final push across the line."

The girl didn't take her eyes off the card.

"I have found that people don't tend to be capable of giving their preference by that point," he said and placed a heavy hand on his chest. "So, _I_ like to ask upfront."

Felix observed as she ran a finger over the image before flipping it back and forth between her fingers, examining it.

"Where will it have the most impact on your little friends to see it, do you think?" he pressed, his tone conversational. "When they find you, or rather, what _remains_ of you?"

Felix's first bout of accidental magic, when he was just two, saw him set fire to a pack of magical tarot cards, by all accounts he had been transfixed. It was an act that had inspired him to leave a memento with his victims, the darkened _Tower_ card skewered through their flesh, typically their forehead. Something about the dark, mystery of the image combined with the raw brutality of his act resonated with him.

But, apparently, not with Hermione Granger. Despite his deliberately provocative demeanour and words, she stared back at him without detectable fear.

Felix tilted his head, picking up another, identical card from his pocket. He ran a single finger over the sharp edge, quick enough that the surface broke the skin, allowing a well of blood to form on the pad of his finger. Felix wiped the spilt crimson over the front of the card in his grasp, leaving a trail down the brickwork of the Tower, obscuring the image slightly.

"Something like this," he said, holding it aloft for her view. "But _dirtier_ obviously," he said with a laugh.

She rolled her eyes at him.

_She rolled her fucking eyes at him._

He was threatening to rip her limb from limb and then burrow a card deep into her flesh until it shattered her skull. He was telling her the whole world would know who had spilt her dirty blood, and that was how she reacted. For a moment, Felix wondered if someone else had already been down here, and rendered her insensible, but he knew that wasn't the case. He would have heard the bragging before now.

Felix stared as rage wrapped itself in coils around his tense muscles. _Did she think the bars of her cage were there to protect her?_ As if they could. Merlin how he wanted to _destroy_ her.

"The forehead is a favourite, but I've always enjoyed the tongue," he continued lowly, needy for her terror. "It's attached while you're still breathing; of course, it would be no fun otherwise."

She stared back as if he hadn't spoken.

His fists clenched, and he gritted his teeth. "You are very _unaffected_ considering the position you're in. I'm sure you believe this show of bravery will earn you respect," he incredulously spat as he eyed her slightly raised a brow. "You. Are. Wrong" he warned darkly.

Felix stepped forward; he debated throwing the bloody card at her, but he pocketed in instead, narrowing his eyes and baring his teeth at the misguided girl held captive in front of him.

"You have no comprehension of who you are around now. Your short-lived defiance will only make us try harder to _break you_. Anyone of us could kill you at any moment. Our Lord will not care. There was no directive given to spare _your_ life. You are of no importance to either side; you are little more than a _device_ my Master will use to keep his followers _happy_. You are at our mercy, and completely defenceless without your magic, good as you supposedly are at it," he sneered. "No more _tricks,_ Miss Granger."

As he finished his speech, Felix realised he was panting and standing directly in front of the cell bars, so close his feet were placed between vertical drops of metal. As his laboured breathing became the only sound, she stood. He eyed her curiously.

_Maybe she would scream, perhaps she would beg._

_Please, please let her beg._

She did neither.

Not once breaking eye contact with him, she held her left arm away from her body and used her other hand to roll up the sleeve of her tattered pink jumper. Her movements were slow, deliberately so, and once she had reached her elbow, she repeated the action on the other side, revealing arms composed of pale and bruised flesh.

His eyes narrowed as she held up the card he had given her in her bloodied fingers, extending her arm entirely and moving it back and forth through the air as if showing it off to an audience of many when there was only him standing in front of her. Then, with a slight flourish of her palm and a loud click of her fingers, the card vanished.

The action was so unexpected Felix jumped, not in fear or surprise but with the almost incapacitating need to rush forward and shake her till she rattled.

"How did you…" he began stupidly, but he couldn't finish his thought.

_It was impossible_. Magic couldn't be done within the cells, even if some idiot had left her with her wand, it would have been redundant. _How had she done it?_ He stalked back and forth in front of the bars for a time, sizing her up before he stopped.

"Where. Is. It?" Felix bit out as his fingers curled around the cold metal. They were a poor substitute for her throat.

"Vanished," she said, speaking at last. If he had to place her tone, he would have said she sounded bored, but there was an air of smugness underlying her words that heated his very blood.

"How?" he pressed impatiently.

"Magic," she said, lifting both her hands and wiggling her fingers, mocking him.

"That's not possible," he barked.

"In your world maybe," she said lazily with a shrug. "But not in mine."

"Muggles do not have magic," he all but growled at her.

She regarded him blankly again, barely tilting her head to the side. She looked at him as if she believed he was struggling with comprehension of her words.

"Show me again," he demanded gruffly and threw another card at her. She caught it. Her reflexes should have surprised him, but there was a fire in her eyes now, one he recognised.

Felix was prepared for it this time, and yet so was she. He had anticipated she would turn her back, and do something to make her movements harder to follow, but she did the opposite. Hermione Granger stepped closer to the bars and _slowed_ her hands. This time when she rolled her palm, he saw the parchment pop out of her grasp as if she had banished it.

Felix was breathing heavily through his nose as he tried to control his temper… or lust; he wasn't sure which emotion was in the driving seat anymore.

"Show. Me. How."

She curled a finger, and he stepped closer till they were mere inches apart, separated only by the bars.

"Pass me another card," she cooed. Her voice was saccharine sweet, and he longed to pull on her pretty hair, to make her yelp, to rid her of her assessing expression, to grasp at her jaw with his unforgiving hands till she lost the sugar from her tone.

Felix reached into his pocket for his custom deck, averting his eyes from her self-satisfied face, but before he could comply with her request, he felt the tip of a wand, _his wand_ , at his throat and then all was blackness.

* * *

When he came to, Felix was lying flat on his back in the cell Hermione had been locked in. As he pulled himself to his feet, two cards fluttered to the ground, and he blinked, trying to clear his vision. _They must have been resting on his body._

As Felix picked them up he caught sight of the images, both abandoned parchment rectangles no longer representing his beloved Tower, in its place were two versions of the Six of Wands.

_Victory indeed_.

* * *

_Abra-abra-cadabra  
_ _I want to reach out and grab ya_  
_Abra-abra-cadabra  
_ _Abracadabra_


	6. TRACK 6: I Put a Spell on You

**TRACK 6**

[Hermione Granger x Tom Riddle]

 _I love you  
_ _I love you  
_ _I love you anyhow  
_ _And I don’t care if you don’t want me  
_ _I’m yours right now_

I Put a Spell on You / Annie Lennox [2014]

* * *

Tom Riddle walked through the once magnificent grounds of Hogwarts castle and allowed himself the luxury of an internal sigh as the damp grass connected with his bare feet. With a minute wave of his hand, the grey, noseless visage he had preferred to use during _this_ war faded away. The tattered robes swept from his body and left a simple suit in their wake. The cut of the jacket and trousers were from a bygone era, but, importantly, he now had shoes. He wasn’t sure why he had ever thought that bare feet were the way to go.

Tom blinked several times as his eyes got used to using this new face. Changing his appearance felt a lot like getting a new pair of glasses after years of wearing a pair with different size frames. He looked much more human this way, or so _she_ had said.

Still, he was pale, and the skin that pulled across his face was without a single blemish, the only marker of his actual age was a touch of grey at his temples. Tom had thought to get rid, but she had laughed at him for his ‘vanity’, and so he had left them behind. He could have almost passed for a whole new person walking around like this. Only his eyes remained unchanged. They were emotionless black pools that held a red sheen in certain lights. Eyes were considered the ‘windows to the soul’ after all.

The light was beginning to dwindle, leaving crystal beams scattered on the lake as the sun slipped below the horizon. Tom walked on.

Death, decay and destruction were everywhere, but Tom felt nothing at all for the spent life on the ground. He passed the mangled bodies as if they were cut flowers that had been crushed underfoot. No more or less than fertiliser for the earth. Mentally he was compiling lists of the improvement works needed for the castle. It was unconscionable to leave it in its present state.

‘Home’ had never had much of a meaning for Tom. For most of his life, it had been nothing other than a four-letter word taunt. He’d come as close as possible to understanding when he came to the school, and for that, his sentimental side would ensure that it was looked after and revered for years to come.

His now booted feet trod through the uneven path left by debris and limbs. He ignored it all, searching for only one face. Tom hadn’t anticipated having to look out here; that had never been the plan. But he had already walked through the Great Hall and the courtyards and found nothing. He had expected to find _her_ standing, face contorted to reveal she was livid, ready to attempt ending herself via his wand, but breathing.

As he circled the Black Lake, a strong gust of wind ripped through the grounds, and his eyes were drawn across the blood-stained grass as a wild mane of curls answered nature's insistent call. Dark brown strands billowed up into the breeze, streaming off in every direction before the wind died away. Stripped of their animation, _her_ hair fell limply to rest against her face.

Tom stared across the desolate landscape at her wide caramel eyes. They were fixed toward the sky as if she was contemplating the clouds. Even across the distance, he knew they were no longer seeing. The air swelled again, and her curls danced with the same reckless abandon that she had given them, once upon a time. It was so strange, _so cruel_ that they should continue to live now that she did not.

Tom drifted towards the cluster where she had fallen. Once he reached her side, he dropped onto his knees, uncaring for how it made him look. Tom needed to untangle her from those that had perished by her side. There were a couple of Weasleys and a blonde girl he did not recognise, though he thought he knew who she was. It took him a long time to separate their entwined fingers, whether from the determined nature of the hold while they breathed or the early onset rigours of death he couldn’t be sure.

When she was finally free of earthly constraints, Tom ghosted the very tips of his fingers over her cheeks, and he bit down the guttural groan that clawed up his throat in response to the coolness of her flesh. Somehow the chill that permeated the pads of his slim fingers made him understand the finality of his discovery.

She was gone.

She would have her cause, Tom thought impotently; _she wouldn’t listen to reason_. He shouldn’t have let her come; he had known that from the off, not that he had much influence over her towards the end, but he could have trapped her in a room somewhere and forced his point. Merlin knew he had done worse things to keep her.

Tom’s eyes left hers, and he scanned down her body, cataloguing the cuts and bruises that littered her slight frame. She hadn’t died quickly; there was no one wound devastating enough to have done it. All of the evidence pointed to a single conclusion, this, her lying here like a broken doll, this was no accident. No tragic mistake of being caught in the crossfire, she had been toyed with and knowing her stubborn resolve of old, it could have been for hours.

Tom’s fingers flexed around the elder wand in his firm grasp, and he felt its sentient magic responding to the fluxing in his core. If he hadn’t been so fucking furious he might have been thankful for the deliberate nature of the act, at least he would have someone to take it out on now.

He carefully zipped up her scorched jumper and transfigured her beloved Muggle apparel into soft lilac robes that glided over her skin. A high collar finished just below her ears, and long sleeves fell almost to the tips of her fingers. He couldn’t see any of the cuts on her that way. Dressed like this, she almost looked like she was asleep.

Again, Tom drifted his fingers over her face, closing her eyes, for the last time, and delicately removed the smudges of soot on her cheeks. She looked too pale. Usually, with his hands on her face, Tom would see the stark difference in their skin tones, today they looked almost the same. His thumb drifted over her full, cold bottom lip, and then he pressed his forehead to hers.

His quiet farewell was interrupted by an unwelcome shuffling behind him.

“Who was it Rookwood?” Tom asked without emotion, not letting _any_ of his simmering rage bleed into his tone. Augustus would have been the only one to follow him over here, and at this point probably the only one of his Death Eaters that could have appeared without it meaning their imminent death. He schooled his features before turning around.

But the now maskless Death Eater, one of his best, wasn’t looking at _his_ features, Rookwood’s eyes were trained on the ground. Regret and something else, something _dark_ shone in his eyes, and it almost made Tom smile to himself. He wasn’t often wrong, but he had misjudged what his _merry_ bunch of followers would make of _her_ when he introduced them, blood purists the lot of them. Tom had expected no less than fireworks, and well, he got them, not that she hadn’t been more than capable of handling herself. With a select few, she had worn down those barriers, with a few others she had inspired a level of devotion that he found pleasing (after it had been established to be the _intangible kind)_. Before she had got there, Tom hadn’t considered the possible effects of introducing a female into the almost exclusively male ranks, especially a young, pretty, _sane_ one. It would seem that many of the older married men amongst his marked were in unhappy unions.

Rookwood cleared his throat before tearing his gaze upwards. “Bella, my Lord,” he answered definitively.

Tom had known, of course, no other explanation would have made sense. He should have put an end to that threat a year before. It was too late now.

_What was one more regret?_

“See that Mrs Lestrange is placed in the cells, I will deal with her when I am back,” he commanded.

“Yes, my Lord,” Rookwood confirmed before opening his mouth and shutting it again.

“What is it?” Tom asked sharply; he was in no mood for protracted conversation.

“Should I…. should I take her… take Hermione?” he mumbled, not quite daring to reach his master’s eyes.

“No, I think not,” Tom responded crisply. He should have prevented this entirely, but now it was done he would at least be confident that not a single hand, bar his, would ever touch her body again.

Rookwood nodded once and with a final look to the floor, scuttled off to complete his task.

Once his disciple had disappeared, heading back towards the castle, Tom reached down with both arms splayed to pick her up, cradling her petite form against his chest. Her errant hair tickled under his chin as it always did.

_‘I can walk, you know Tom’._

The words flashed into his mind, accompanied by the image of a little witch, almost vibrating with swirling magic, _with power_ , and near spitting with barely controlled rage. He almost smiled at the memory, almost...

_Not this time, Hermione._

_Not this time, my love._

* * *

Tom paced around the grand study in his new manor. They had started work on the building when he had first returned as it had always been part of his plan to have an _opulent_ house. Though Tom could have occupied any he wished, he had still gone ahead with the construction. Immaterial as such things were to him now, it had been something he had dreamed of often while sitting on the edge of his aged cot, in his barren room, at the orphanage.

Not that it was only a case of uncharacteristic sentiment moving his hands in the matter, no, _she_ had _hated_ Malfoy Manor, right down to the very foundations and had no time for its primary occupants. For himself, Tom had never _really_ cared for the peacocks.

Tom looked across the vast expanse of his desk to the smaller one placed in front of it; the Louis XVI flame mahogany table had taken pride of place. It was the first thing that had made her smile when she had come here. He had adjusted it for her use. There was a pad at the back, tucked away on a small shelf, when you placed a text there it would sort itself back into the well-stocked library, you could request additional volumes the same way. She would never see that, though. Every consideration had been made for her, and now she wasn’t here to make use of it. _He was so angry with her still_. Rookwood had asked if he wanted the desk removed, Tom hadn’t yet answered. He did so hate it when plans went awry.

Stepping from around the desks, Tom moved to stand in front of the large window, his eyes gliding across the tastefully manicured grounds till he saw the rose bush; large, distinct, pink blooms grew peacefully out of the recently tilled earth. The bench he had requested would arrive tomorrow; maybe he would be able to ease his incapacitating irritation working out there from time to time.

There was no such marking for Bellatrix, and Tom hadn’t even bothered to torture her. Her mind had been shattered a lifetime before. _What was the point in drilling a lesson into someone incapable of learning it?_ A quick Avada followed by a speedy Incendio had been all she was suitable for.

As he turned back around, he threw his, still half full, tumbler against the bookcase. Jagged glass shards shattered to the floor and the deep amber liquid seeped into the carefully bound parchment and leather.

_‘There’s no need to take your poor mood out on the books Tom,’ the girl looked over her volume and gave him a challenging smirk which he returned with an intense gaze, amused by her boldness._

Tom clucked his tongue and waved a hand to clear up his mess.

It would have to be different this time, _very different_.

* * *

As Tom Riddle stepped out into the stone corridor, he looked around himself, searching for confirmation he had achieved what he desired. He spotted a cluster of Durmstrang students in their distinctive formal robes as music wafting from the Great Hall caught his ear.

He smiled before conjuring a mirror and tilting his head as he regarded his seventeen-year-old self in the reflection. He cast a quick Tempus and sensed the urgency of the moment and banished the mirror before moving to stand in the entryway of the hall, straightening his robes as he did so.

_Three… Two… One…_

On schedule, Hermione came rushing out of the Ball, younger than she had been when he first met her, and so very much _alive_. Her hair was pulled back and teased beyond all recognition, and despite having seen pictures he was still slightly awed by her appearance, though he preferred her in his shirts and socks, padding around the library, he could concede that she looked beautiful. As his gaze fell back on her face, he registered the puffiness in her cheeks and the sheen in her eyes… _right on time_.

Faultlessly taking his cue, he stepped forward to block her path. “Miss Granger, do excuse me for interrupting you, but I do not think we have been introduced,” Tom began cordially, and she abruptly stopped in front of him, looking slightly at sea with his sudden appearance.

“I.. no,” she murmured, brows furrowing.

Looking to leverage her already discombobulated mind from her fight with her friend, Tom swept forward and boldly took her arm. “Allow me to escort you back in,” he said smoothly without a hint of a request.

Moving quickly, he could see her blinking in surprise, but he wouldn’t give her time to think. This time he had a plan, one he would execute _flawlessly_.

“A dance?” he suggested as they moved back into the full room sparkling with icicles and magic. _Yes, this would do_.

“I… how did you?” she asked from his side, her eyes assessing him, he could almost hear the cogs in her wondrous mind spinning. He bit down the desire to grin; she was right in front of him, and he had managed to throw her off to the point where she had lost a good deal of her usual articulation.

“I promise, Miss Granger, one dance and I will answer all of your questions.”

She nodded, and he led her to the floor, firmly holding victory within his cool grasp.

* * *

Hermione followed the unknown boy onto the dance floor, too confused to do anything else. She had been trying to leave, to run _far away_ from the cruel words Ron had shouted at her. Ron, who was supposed to be her friend, Ron, who she knew _deep down_ she felt more for than mere friendship. His rejection had stung, and she hadn’t been focused on anything other than getting back to the dorm room before traitorous tears began to fall. Hermione certainly hadn’t expected to have someone blocking her path; everyone was inside having too much fun to be lurking in corridors.

He knew her name. _How?_ She supposed dancing with one of the champions would have made her a hot topic of conversation in the hall; Hermione shuddered at the mean spirited things that would have been whispered. At least she hadn’t heard any of them.

Hermione looked back up at the boy, _the young man_. He was undoubtedly one of the upperclassmen, though she thought she knew everyone from Hogwarts, maybe not to speak to, but Hermione saw them all at meals, and she would have remembered his face, this boy was striking. He was pale and angular, with dark wavy hair falling almost over his brow on one side. He seemed aloof, yet; something was lurking behind his eyes, something she couldn’t quite place, an intensity that left her feeling nervous.

He wasn’t wearing the uniform that was mandatory for the Durmstrang students; _maybe he was from Beauxbatons?_ Though he didn’t have an accent, not that the fact precluded the possibility he went there, anyone from anywhere could attend one of the other magical schools.

As they reached the floor, Hermione suddenly felt self-conscious, not that she hadn’t been something of a spectacle all evening. Still, with Viktor, she had forgotten about it, caught up in his exuberance and her elation. It had been her very own Cinderella moment, but the clock had struck twelve with her argument with Ron, and suddenly the iridescent cloud she had been floating burst.

More than one pair of eyes looked over at her and her new dance partner, and unless she was mistaken, she saw Headmaster Dumbledore look alarmed before his face became utterly neutral.

The boy moved to take her hand, and Hermione faltered, she had felt confident with Viktor, sure enough to disguise her faults or act to compensate. Under the steady gaze of _this boy_ , this _unknown boy_ , she felt exposed and vulnerable, attempts to dissemble seemed impossible.

“I don’t dance that well,” she fumblingly offered, and the boy smirked.

“Allow me to help you with that Miss Granger.”

Though his words offered assistance, his face gave her pause, he reached forward to wave a hand over her arm, and Hermione felt her body straighten without her command. Every vertebra in her spine shifted into a new alignment and her arms lifted as if pulled by invisible strings. Her fingers splayed, and she looked down at her hands as if they belonged to another. As she stood, transformed in shape, he slid in front of her, creeping into the place left open by her forcibly posed form. His hand linked with her palm held aloft, as his other darted sinfully over her back, unhurried.

“What did you do?” Hermione whispered anxiously, relieved for only a moment when she realised she could still speak. She had no idea what spell he had cast, but the tingling numbness in her body was making a dread coil in her stomach, the unnatural hold she was captive to ratcheted her sensual awareness tenfold.

The boy stared at her, ignoring her question, before pressing into her lower back, pushing her forward and almost eliminating the gap between them. He moved to bow at her, just a perfunctory dip of his head as they were already in hold, and bile rose in Hermione’s throat as she felt herself bend forward to meet him.

As a new song began he moved her into a twirl to start, the manoeuvre was elaborate yet understated; Hermione could tell he had skill as a dancer, more so than any others she had shared the floor with that evening. The skirts of her dress billowed around her, exposing her ankles, and she realised with a growing sense of alarm that she had no more control of her legs than her arms, she looked up at him wide-eyed.

“See isn’t that _easier_ ,” he crooned, and his voice smoothed over her lightly, like a spoken caress, like the melodious sound of the piano in the musical piece being played by the band. The boy looked stoic in the face of her obvious distress and began leading her in more dynamic movements as the base of the song kicked in.

_One two three shift._

_One two three shift._

“What have you done to me?” Hermione demanded harshly, wishing the music wasn’t so loud so that her words would carry.

“Nothing you didn’t ask me for,” he replied serenely. “You presented me with a problem, Miss Granger, I merely took the initiative to solve it... as _I_ saw fit.” His eyes sparkled in challenge, daring her to refute his words as he swept her around the floor. He weaved them expertly in and out of the other couples, tilting his body with expert precision.

_One two three shift._

_One two three shift._

“Who are you?” she demanded, her anger rising at his high-handed evasiveness. _Anger was good_ , she told herself; it helped her overcome the throat constricting fear. He raised a brow at her, and she felt her temper fraying.

“You said you would answer my questions,” she ground out glaring at him.

_One two three shift._

_One two three shift._

The music felt different now; it was darker, closer, further away, and all-absorbing. The outside world, the space beyond their interlinked arms was blurring away again, just as it had with Viktor, only this time it wasn’t attributable to experiencing a sense of youthful joie de vivre for the first time. No, this was _oppressive_ , like she was being dragged from reality, like every step her bewitched body was making was further away from home.

“My name is Tom,” he answered finally.

Hermione had expected him to deflect further, but he almost seemed pleased to tell her his name, he searched her eyes, _as if looking for recognition?_ She had no idea why she would have heard of him. His hand gripped her tighter as he spun her around before tugging her body back into his embrace. Their torsos were closer now, and his eyes were burning into hers. Hermione gasped from the quick movements highlighting her marionette-like response to his spell.

_One two three shift._

_One two three shift._

“You shouldn’t use magic to _control_ a person,” she spat at him hotly. Memories of Professor Moody’s lesson and the tortured spider echoed in her mind. _Who would do that?_ She had questioned at the time, _who indeed_.

“I’m not,” he defended. The words were uttered right next to her ear, and his tone was firm. He brushed a loose curl from off her face. “I’m using it to make this moment _perfect._ ”

Hermione looked at his dark eyes with confusion.

“You’re still you,” he elaborated tapping the side of her temple with a slim finger. “I would _never_ suppress _your_ mind, Hermione. I’m just controlling the setting, so to speak,” he said with a lazy grin, pleased with himself.

_One two three shift._

_One two three shift._

“Semantics,” she said exasperated. “I want to stop dancing now.”

“Soon,” he agreed, “just a little while longer.”

His agreement surprised her, again, Hermione had assumed she would have to shout or plead with him and yet his response seemed genuine. The relief that should have filled her, from the knowledge that all of this would be over soon never came, something about him, _Tom_ , something about the way he held himself made her feel like she was balancing on the tips of her toes, she couldn’t afford to relax.

_One two three shift._

_One two three shift._

“We never got to do this the last time,” he said as he made a jerking motion with his hand and her head was forced by invisible fingers to rest against his shoulder, her face lying in the crook of his neck.

“What do you mean the _last time_?” she questioned desperately, as her heart raced at the implications of such a ridiculous statement.

He spun her around again, quicker this time, though with her head now fixed against him, Hermione could pick out things in the room. She caught Ginny’s blanched face and the fact that Harry and Ron were missing, as they came to a stop she saw Headmaster Dumbledore was cutting across the floor towards them.

_What was going on?_

_One two three shift._

_One two three shift._

Hermione tried to push, to fight against the spell, doing everything from attempting to thrash her arms to force her feet to stomp but nothing worked.

“Oh, none of that Hermione,” he scolded, though his tone wasn’t angry, he sounded merely amused.

“How do you know my name?” she asked, tears were beginning to prick at her eyes. At first, she had thought this would be just a dance with a strange boy that eventually she would laugh over, but now, now she wasn’t sure how this story would end.

He stopped suddenly, and the abrupt stillness made her feel off-balance, though her body didn’t react, which made her feel even stranger. He moved the hand that had been lancing the flesh on her back and ghosted slim fingers over her cheeks.

“Hermione Jean Granger you are my past, present and future,” he revealed, his eyes glittering darkly, and with a faint pop of apparition, they were gone.

* * *

 _I put a spell on you  
_ _Because you’re mine_


	7. BONUS TRACK - Closer

**BONUS TRACK**

[Hermione Granger x Regulus Black]

_Stranded in this spooky town  
_ _Stoplight is swaying and the phone lines are down  
_ _Floor is crackling cold  
_ _She took my heart, I think she took my soul_

Closer / Kings of Leon [2008]

* * *

Hermione shuddered as a gust of wind blew against her, threatening to knock her off her feet. The movement was so strong it seemed to rip through her slim coat as if it wasn’t there at all. The growing chill nipped at her fingers with teeth capped with ice, and she shuddered before marching forward at double her previous pace.

Hermione’s hands worked furiously, despite their growing stiffness, to tighten her insufficient jacket over her middle. It was one of those nights in early October where the sudden drop in temperature had taken everyone by surprise. _As if it didn’t happen every year,_ she thought derisively. Hermione maintained a quick pace but kept an eye on her footing as she detected the first signs of frost crisping the pavement. The last thing she needed after the longest day at work imaginable was to slip up and land on her bum.

The wind whipped and galloped, whistling angrily in her ears, and Hermione walked on.

Finally, after what felt like hours, her building was in sight. Soft lights from the flats of residents already at home called out to her like a beacon of warmth. Hermione exhaled and blinked as the hot air steamed in front of her.

Hermione fumbled in her bag, looking for her keys. She wished she had headed Ginny’s instruction to clear the bloody thing out as her hand came across crumpled receipt after crumpled receipt. No longer getting anywhere while still trying to walk, Hermione stopped under the artificial glare of a streetlight and held her bag off her shoulder to peek inside. The tall post was the last of the illuminations before she would reach home, and Hermione knew she would have no hope if she wandered further into the night. The inclement weather had made it much darker than usual. Had she thought ahead of time, she would have apparated straight into her living room from the office.

Finally feeling a metal clink against the ring on her middle finger, Hermione pulled her hand up victoriously and raced towards the finish line, sighing in relief as she yanked the main door open and felt the warmth of the lobby flood through her.

Hermione pressed the button to call the lift as she opened her post box, pulling out a stack of Muggle letters and hurrying into the lift once it had belled its arrival. She was absently glancing through a ‘local offers’ pamphlet when an arm jutted out between the closing doors.

“Hold the lift,” a thick, decidedly male voice instructed urgently, and Hermione took a quick step backwards to reach the open button. The doors stuttered and groaned but eventually pulled back, and a tall, slim man appeared between them, nodding gratefully to her before stepping into the small space.

Hermione didn’t recognise him, but she offered him a small, polite smile anyway. There were over a hundred flats in this block alone; countless people lived in the entire development. Hermione barely knew above five people to speak to, and even that was only as far as a cursory greeting. She could hardly be considered a social being.

 _He could be visiting_ ; she pondered to herself as the doors slammed closed and she stepped away from the backlit panel to the far wall, making room for the man to hit the button for the floor he wanted, but he remained where he was standing.

“It appears we are headed towards the same destination,” he said, smiling at her. Hermione shyly smiled back and looked back down at her papers. There was something about him, something familiar that she couldn’t quite place.

The lift began its ascent, and she stuffed the ripped envelopes into her bag. It didn’t appear that there was anything from Australia, not that she had been expecting it, her parents would need time to cool off to think about what she had told them and process her explanations. They would come around, she was sure of it, Harry had told her not to worry.

Hermione’s thoughts were derailed when all of a sudden the lift floor jerked _violently,_ and she was shunted forward, only just managing to place both hands on the wall to brace herself before the lights flickered and went out.

_Great, just bloody fantastic._

Hermione reached into her jacket pocket for her phone to use as a light, but as she grasped it, the emergency power came on. It made a horrible buzzing sound as it kicked in and then the lift was bathed in dull light, coating everything with a faint orange glow.

Hermione found herself in front of the panel of buttons again, and she turned to speak to the lifts other occupant, jumping when she realised he was a lot closer than she expected, standing almost directly behind her. They must have both been moved around by the aggressive stop. Her eyes unconsciously fell to his chest; she was eye level with the base of his neck, and he was just so… she flushed, and she could swear she heard a deep inhale as blood rushed to her face.

“I’ll just try the alarm,” she managed to stutter out before turning back around and cringing at her uncharacteristically distracted behaviour.

Hermione pressed the tiny, glowing yellow bell, and a crisp dialling sound rang into the small space, on and on the tone went, but nothing happened. She tried again and again, but there was still no answer. Huffing she pulled her phone out of her pocket and unlocked the screen, only to discover there was no signal.

“Damn,” she cursed, looking towards the heavens that were obscured by useless reflective metal.

“Problem?” the man asked silkily.

“Well, no one seems to be answering the bell,” she replied, needless pointing to the button, “and my phone hasn’t got any bars… have you got a signal on yours?” she asked hopefully.

He shook his head, and she was about to argue that he hadn’t even checked when he spoke again. “I don’t carry one.”

 _That was odd;_ Hermione thought _all_ Muggles carried phones. She had only brought one recently, schooling at Hogwarts had left her somewhat behind the curve with technology, but as she had opted to stay in Muggle flats, she knew she had to get to grips with things quickly so as not to stand out. Hermione let her eyes sweep over the man again; he appeared to be about her age, definitely no more than twenty-five, she would have considered that Muggles without technology were slightly _hippyish_ , but the man was immaculately turned out.

Hermione bit her lip and thought about what to do next. Her mind went to her wand that was holstered under her skirt, against her thigh; she could have used it to get the doors open at least, but it was inadvisable to draw it in such a small, enclosed space. The man was big, if he freaked out, she could very likely get hurt and then where would she be. No, it seemed it would be best to wait, the building was well managed, _someone_ would have to notice the alarm had been pressed sooner or later.

Hermione shivered as the cold air seemed to seep in through the crack in the doors and the man shrugged his heavy coat off before holding it out to her.

“Oh no, I couldn’t, but thank you,” she replied politely, shaking her head.

He stepped closer, holding his arm almost against her chest. “I insist,” he pressed firmly. His accent was smooth and rich, aristocratic with an edge that she couldn’t quite place. Though his tone seemed warm, there was an air of command in his words. She didn’t think he was likely to be persuaded to her way of thinking. _Old fashioned values_ her Mother’s voice chimed in her head.

“Thank you,” she murmured, and he nodded. She moved to take the coat from him, but he stepped back, holding out the collar so he could help her put it on. Hermione contemplated him for a moment but then, feeling that it was silly to try and resist a kindly meant offer twice in under a minute, she moved to push an arm in. Once she had the thick coat on, she pulled on the sides trying to subtly snuggle into the much-needed warmth, only to still completely when she felt his hands on her neck.

“My apologies,” he breathed against her already goose-pimpled flesh, “your hair was caught.”

Hermione managed a nod before spinning abruptly, placing her back against the opposite wall, where her neck was safe from accidental touching, though she already missed the sensation. His jacket was _big_ on her. The sleeves hung beyond her hands, and the double-breasted front could almost wrap around her fully again. She turned her head under the pretence of freeing a trapped curl to sniff against the lapel, but she could detect nothing, not even the smell of the wool, no aftershave, no ‘smell of man’, _nothing_.

“It seems we will be here for a while,” he said, seemingly without a care in the world as he leant back against the wall. Now that he was clad in just a dark blue jumper, she could better see how his long, dark brown hair fell almost to his shoulders. He had thick eyebrows that sat low above his dark grey eyes and full lips. He was attractive, _very much so_ , so handsome in fact that he was almost beautiful. He would have been, were it not for the rugged casual air that offset his clean lines. He shuffled against the wall as if getting comfortable and pushed his long legs further out in front of him.

_His mannerisms were so familiar._

“You are anxious to get home,” he observed, cocking his head to the side, assessing her.

“Yes,” Hermione admitted quietly, she didn’t want to appear rude, but she _did_ want to be at home right now, preferably with a glass of wine, curled up next to her grumpy cat in thick, sexless, pyjamas.

He smirked, and she seriously wondered if he had guessed the direction of her thoughts. “Why don’t you pull out your wand then and get us moving,” he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“How did you….” she began incredulously.

“I was a wizard,” he interrupted.

“This is brilliant,” Hermione exclaimed, jumping forward to reach into her bag. In the excitement she failed to notice that with all of their moving around, the long shoulder strap had tucked itself under her heel and as she stepped she was propelled forward, landing harshly on her knees and upending the contents of her bag as she clattered to the floor.

The man was on her in a flash. “Are you okay?” he asked urgently, dropping down beside her.

“Yes,” she breathed out, as pain lanced up her legs and she winced as she tried to climb. “Embarrassed more than anything,” she leant down to pick up her things and her hands connected with her flat, compact mirror…

“Wait,” she said, her mind suddenly racing. The man seemed to tower over her even now they were both crouched. “You said… you said... _was._ ”

_I was a wizard._

“I did,” he confirmed softly though the words seemed to bounce around the small box and fly back at her.

With shaking fingers Hermione picked up the mirror and looked into it, only her reflection greeted her despite the man crouched at her shoulder, and Hermione felt ice slip around her heart. For a moment, it was as if she had seen the reflection of the basilisk from the second year again as her entire body went rigid. His hand on her hip brought her back to her senses, and she righted herself, despite her screaming knees, and stepped away from him.

“You’re… you’re…” she muttered without direction. It seemed pointless to say what he was. There was supposed to be a treaty that protected her. Still, Hermione knew that mentioning the illegality of whatever he was planning was probably not going to be enough to save her.

“Regulus Arcturus Black, at your service,” he said with a slight bow and a wink.

“Your reflection? It wasn’t,” she shook her head as her mind processed his words. “Wait…. _Regulus_?”

“I expected you to recognise me sooner, Miss Granger. I will admit, though it’s not entirely gentlemanly to do so, I’m a little hurt,” his eyes glittered, and she realised with some confusion that he was _teasing her_.

Hermione couldn’t take in the information; she was already losing herself to panic. But then, it seemed to filter through, all of his little movements, his appearance, that was why she thought he had looked so familiar. _He reminded her of Sirius_.

Her fingers moved towards the pleats of her skirt, but it was too late.

“I don’t think so,” Regulus said blankly while holding her precious wand aloft in front of her. “Thank you for keeping it in such an _interesting_ place, much more fun _for me_ than a pocket.” His mouth stretched into a broad smile.

She felt her heartbeat faster then, trapped; she was wholly stuck. “You’re supposed to be dead,” she whispered, her throat dry. _Keep him talking Hermione_.

“Yes that,” he responded in a bored tone. “Technically, the rumours of my _demise_ were correct. In the strictest sense, I am no longer _living,_ ” he explained.

Hermione shook her head, trying desperately to organise her thoughts. “What... what do you want?”

He smiled before creeping forward with the leisurely pace of a man, or whatever he was, who was holding all the cards, who had already won. Hermione heard a slick clicking sound as he opened his full lips and two large fangs descended into view. She backed against the wall, but there was nowhere left to go.

“Look, I just want to go home okay? I won’t tell anyone I’ve seen you,” she said, raising her hands in front of herself as if they would offer any defence.

“I’m _so sorry_ , Hermione, that’s just not possible,” he sympathised, actually managing to look sorry. Somehow the conciliatory nature of his address made her angry.

“Why didn’t you?... _The war,_ ” she all but shouted at him, he had left them all, left Sirius. His brother had gone to his own grave, thinking his younger sibling was dead.

If Regulus was concerned by her yelling, he didn’t let on. “I found that once I was no longer living, mortal concerns mattered little to me. In any case, my parents would not have welcomed me back. They were all better off thinking of me as dead.”

“Then why come here? _Why now?_ ”

He flew in front of her then, his movements little more than a blur as he pinned her against the lift wall, his arms crowding her, before he stretched forward, tugging on a curl. “Can you not guess?” he taunted.

“What, you happen across a girl to… to… _to drink_ that just so happened to have a link to your former life?”

Regulus took a step back, and his calm grey eyes settled on hers. “It wasn’t a coincidence, Hermione,” he said, shaking his head as if he was disappointed in her.

“What do you mean?” she panted.

“This took an _incredible_ amount of planning, planning that I’m sure _someone like you_ would appreciate,” he said as he moved his head closer to her again. “I have learnt _everything_ there is to know about you; everything I needed to know. I have been dead longer than I lived, and I find it’s time for some companionship.”

“I can’t offer you that… Regulus,” she forced out the name, the word sounding strange.

“Maybe not right now,” he said as he pushed his coat away from her shoulders, “but tomorrow night, you will be perfect.”

Her eyes widened at the implication of his words, and a wicked smirk was the last thing she saw with mortal eyes, as the lights flickered again, and the small space was plunged into darkness.

* * *

_Driven by the strangle of vein  
_ _Showing no mercy I’d do it again_


	8. BONUS TRACK - Haunted

**BONUS TRACK**

[Hermione Granger x Barty Crouch Jr]

_It’s where we go  
_ _It’s where we’ll be  
_ _I know if I’m onto you, I’m onto you  
_ _Onto you, I’m onto you  
_ _Onto you, you must be onto me_

Haunted / Beyonce [2013]

* * *

Luck had never been a friend of Barty Crouch Jr, but then again, maybe the good lady had merely been biding her time.

He had been thrown across the room in a jerking mass of limbs. Then his blood seemed to fizz with a familiar tingle as his outward disguise melted away. The next moment Dumbledore was standing, no, _looming_ over him, and demanding an explanation. As if the old bastard didn’t already know everything.

Harry Potter was cowering in the corner with a look of pure astonishment on his face and Barty supposed he should have felt fear. After all, this was the end, _wasn’t it?_ There didn’t appear to be any way out now. Yet all his mind registered was elation. His Lord, his master, had done it. _He was back_. Voldemort had a corporeal form again. It didn’t matter what happened to him now. As far as Barty was concerned, he had served his purpose. The plan had never included an exit for him, and he had known what that meant at the time he was given his orders. Barty was _glad_ to do it. He was glad to do _anything_ that furthered their cause.

Barty saw his wand on the other side of the room and wondered why Dumbledore didn’t point his own under his chin. He could have incapacitated him a hundred times over by now, and yet he stood there watching proceedings without once becoming the true aggressor Barty knew him to be.

_Still affecting the visage of a wise old grandfatherly headmaster then?_ And people thought his Lord was twisted.

But then a door crashed open, and the tension in the small dark room shifted. It didn’t disappear. It was as if the pressure in the air rippled before crashing down again in a different pattern.

The game board had been reset.

Barty had expected backup, McGonagall, Flitwick or maybe even an official from the tournament, but instead, a panting Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger all but fell into the space.

It was an opening, a minute one, but Barty had worked with less.

He disarmed the headmaster with a single wave of his hand. A push of magic timed to perfection. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did, Barty took it as a mark of fate’s desire to smile on him. He was long overdue such a blessing.

Barty only had a split second to decide on what to do next. Killing the boy was out of the question, killing Dumbledore was too off-piste, even for him. It hadn’t been part of the plan. There was a sequence to how these things _needed_ to be done, everything at the right time.

Barty fired a hex, and the headmaster froze in space, a look of surprise just visible in the gentle raise of his brow. Barty had the urge to spit at him. But he didn’t, there wasn’t time. The magic wouldn’t last long; Dumbledore was too strong.

The students in the corner of the room scrambled, all talking over each other and Barty honed in on them.

“Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo,” he cooed manically, waving his wand between the two teenagers that were still up for grabs.

When his wand point landed on the girl with the wild hair, he shrugged. “Hard luck, Miss Granger.”

His shot was accurate: _how could it not be in such close quarters?_ Hermione Granger fell to the floor with a thud that knocked the remaining air from the room.

Then there were screams.

“Be seeing you,” Barty said to Potter as he walked out of the door. The boy was too stunned to move, and Barty cursed for the hundredth time that year that he couldn’t kill him himself, and save his Lord the trouble.

Barty was already at the end of the corridor when he heard rushing feet in the other direction.

It sounded like the cavalry was about to arrive.

_What a pity they were too late._

* * *

When his Lord heard what Barty had done when he left Hogwarts behind as little more than a fever dream, he laughed. The sound was raspy, and far less precise and intoxicating than it had been when Barty first joined his side, but it was thrilling all the same. He was back. He was _real_.

Barty knelt next to the grand chair in the Malfoy’s ground floor sitting room as Lord Voldemort’s fingers danced against the back of his skull. His grip tightened as he huffed out his amusement and Barty clenched his fists to keep himself calm.

Physical contact was… problematic. It had always been that way. Barty found he craved touch and feared it in almost equal measure. He existed in a constant state of starvation, but at the same time, forever worried that the _next_ piece of bread might be the one that would break him.

“I am _pleased_ you have returned, Barty,” Lord Voldemort said. His words were a whisper in the wind. “You will be needed.”

It was a command more than an observation, but one that Barty was happy and eager to obey.

“I am my Lord’s faithful servant,” Barty replied, and his Lord smiled.

“That you are.”

* * *

Barty knew he could have been spared the trip to Azkaban for the breakout; he would have been granted a reprieve, he was sure of it. After all, he was currently enjoying the unrivalled privilege of being his Lord’s favourite. One word and his Lord would have told him he could help elsewhere. But Barty never asked. He wanted, more than anything, to be useful.

He had done everything, and anything asked of him since taking his rightful place at his master’s side, and he had impressed at every turn. It hadn’t even been that hard. Considering his Lord had survived with just Wormtail, there wasn’t much in the way of competition, but that was about to change.

Barty had taken great pleasure in blasting a hole into the side of a building he once believed would be his tomb. He met the steely eyes of Reuben Yaxley with a smirk that the large, severe man didn’t return. Barty didn’t care; he had other tasks to complete.

He knew in his blood that this would be his last time here, there was no way he would come back again, and so Barty hadn’t been able to resist the pull to visit his old ‘room’.

_This is where she perished_ , Barty thought to himself as he trod on the slates he had stepped on thousands of times. There was no trace of her left behind. Not that he had honestly expected to find any. Dementors weren’t big on keepsakes.

He had brought death to both of his parents in the end. His father had never expected anything less. It didn’t hurt as much as it should have done, or as much as it had, in the past.

Barty pressed a hand against the cot where his mother must have laid and closed his eyes as he tried to imagine her there. He shut out the noises in the distance, the explosions and the screams, and focused on what she looked like, how he remembered her.

After a time, he thought he could feel a presence, but when he opened his eyes, they were gone.

* * *

Barty made no secret of the fact he had no time for the other Death Eaters. It took more than sharing a _uniform_ to prompt trust and warm regards. It had never been a _social_ club, and despite his now _years_ of faithful service, Barty had never thought that any of the rest of them were half as dedicated or as useful as him. He hated the former prisoners less than the rest, at least _they_ had never denounced the only fundamental truth of their lives to save their own worthless skin.

Work continued, and Barty went on missions with whoever he was assigned to without question or hesitation. Though, he couldn’t stop himself from indulging in the odd bit of friendly fire, when he could get away with it, which was surprisingly often.

He heard Yaxley tell Dolohov that he was ‘as mad as Bellatrix’, but Barty neither cared or believed him. Bella was rabid with her devotion; he was much more effective than that.

* * *

Just when Barty felt like he was settling into the new routine, things started to change. Not the assignments, or his peers, or Merlin forbid, his Lord, but him. _Something_ was changing with _him_.

At first, Barty put it down to stress; he wasn’t sleeping well, which made his concentration falter often. There was just so much to do, so many ways to prove himself and he wanted to achieve them all. But he was so tired.

Whenever he had been awake, planning long into the night, Barty started to think he was seeing things. It happened repeatedly. It was just glimmers at first, a hint of something whole that would never fully form—a flash of white that would blur at the corner of his eyes and then dance away.

It started happening more and more until it was almost every day. He worried that his senses were failing, that his sanity was abandoning him, that he was becoming _redundant_.

Barty resolved to drink a little less and eat a little better. His time in prison had taken its toll on his body. He owed it to his mother to try and keep going. He owed it to his Lord to be as fit as he could be, the perfect vessel for the execution of his plans.

* * *

The first time he saw her, Barty thought he must have been dreaming. Lately, he had been so sleep deprived that the lines between reality and hallucinations were ever thinning. But _somehow_ he knew he was awake when it happened.

She appeared, sitting opposite him in the library one evening as if she had every right to be there.

That was all she did. She stopped by him as Barty poured through an ancient tome, and when his hand trembled at the sight of her, she smiled. Then she was gone.

But _Hermione Granger_ didn’t stay gone.

* * *

The next time she appeared, Barty was walking down a corridor, McNair beside him, on their way to report following a boring but successful mission.

Hermione didn’t even look at him; she kept up an even pace, moving in the other direction. She had a sereneness about her that reminded Barty of the grey lady, but she seemed more... _whole_ than the Hogwarts ghost. But McNair did not make any comment that would suggest he had seen her. McNair noticed _all_ women in his general proximity, dead or not, Hermione Granger would have warranted a mention.

When Barty turned around, she was turning at the other end of the corridor.

She didn’t look back.

* * *

The pattern repeated over the next month. She bled into Barty’s life like inkblots, accidentally dashed all over a freshly written page. Unwanted and derailing. Hermione Granger popped up seemingly when she felt like it, no matter where Barty would be when the mood struck her. Sometimes she looked at him, sometimes not. Sometimes her face held a small, knowing smile, other times she had no expression at all.

The first time she spoke, it was in the dead of night. Barty woke to get some water and there she was, sitting in his favoured armchair and looking out of the window.

“I’ve been speaking to your mother Barty,” she said without even looking in his direction. “She’s _most_ disappointed in you.”

Barty froze by the side of his bed and felt the cold air eat at his threadbare pyjamas.

“Stop it,” he bit out and stormed from the room.

As he paced down the corridor with his insides squirming, Barty’s mind flittered back to the long white dress she had been wearing, and how it had been splattered with blood. The blotches had been illuminated in the moonlight—Red, semi-dried pools that clung to her skin.

Hermione Granger hadn’t been wearing that when he killed her, Barty was sure of it, and there shouldn’t have been blood. He’d killed her with a dispassionate shot of green to the chest. He hadn’t wanted to waste the valuable time he had gained by taking it slow.

It didn’t make sense.

When he returned to his room, having sated one kind of thirst, she was gone.

* * *

Pondering his sanity was not a _new_ activity for Barty, and yet, although familiar, it was an action that brought him no pleasure.

The hovering at the side of his sight continued, as did the occasional words from the girl. It tapped on his nerves and grated on his resolve. There were too many questions. Why her? Why now? Hermione Granger wasn’t even his _latest_ victim, and she was far from his most noteworthy. Why was it _her_? Why was this girl _tormenting_ him?

Barty took to checking all corners of his room before he went to bed at night, but it made no difference, she showed up whenever she liked and used her presence and her words like sandpaper against his senses.

He would beat this.

He would _beat_ her.

* * *

“You’re chewing your lip again Barty,” the lingering sound of her voice tickled at his senses, and it made Barty drive his teeth into his lip all the harder.

* * *

“Trouble sleeping?” she all but sang as he tossed and turned in bed. The faint sound of her laughter followed him up the hall after he had thrown off his sheets and abandoned his room.

* * *

Barty kept his back straight as he knelt in front of his Lord and felt him _rip_ through his mind. He had long grown used to submitting himself to mental _evaluation_ at the drop of a hat, but he never got used to the pain, it was chronic.

As a child, Barty had learnt to box things up and keep them hidden away, occasionally, _deliberately_ letting his mask slip so his father could glimpse what really lurked behind his typically impassive eyes. There was no winning in playing such games with his Lord, so Barty kept what he couldn’t afford to share tucked away where even his Lord would not find it.

He was loyal; he would always be faithful. But he was broken too, and broken things didn’t hold water as well as the rest. When subjected to enough pressure, Barty knew his cracks could give way to form holes. It was already happening. A slither of a girl was crushing the fine porcelain of his sanity beneath her dainty feet.

He couldn’t let his Lord know that.

* * *

“Why do you keep doing this?”

Barty rested his head against a nearby tree as Hermione walked around him, idly moving in smaller and smaller circles. The air was bitterly cold, but she apparently didn’t feel it. Of course, she didn’t.

“You took away my life, Barty,” she said with a smile he had grown to hate. “I will not rest until I take away yours.”

* * *

When he got back from his latest mission with a lumbering Rodolphus, Barty found Hermione sitting at the desk in his room, studying the spines of the books he had left there.

“It must _kill_ you,” he spat. “Being able to _see_ them but not having the ability to touch, to feel, to read, to remember who you were before I reduced you to a crumpled _nothing_ on the ground.”

Tales of her _supposed_ intelligence were legend, Barty had never been overly impressed when he was her teacher, but then, he hadn’t been focused on her.

Barty was aiming at a weak spot, and he revelled in it. He expected her to huff in annoyance or snap back at him.

She did neither.

_Would he never learn?_

“I wouldn’t have thought _you_ were able to grasp something as advanced as this,” Hermione said, indicating the book on advanced Transfiguration theory. “I thought I understood from stories I’d been told that you were a little… what’s the polite word, ah yes, _dim_.”

“Dim?” Barty parrotted back blankly, and Hermione nodded.

“Tapped,” she said, knocking a finger against her head. “Not quite the full ticket.”

Barty’s hands fisted, and she let out a tinkling, delighted laugh. “None of that Barty, it’s not like you can hurt me now anyway.”

He turned his back on her and walked to the wardrobe, taking off his coat, determined to carry on as if she wasn’t there.

“I _assumed_ you were kept around as _your Lord_ likes panting dogs following at his feet. I don’t know whether I should be impressed or cross at my poor deductions to find that you’re actually somewhat functional.”

“You know _nothing_ about me,” Barty seethed.

She smiled at him. “Oh, Barty, if only that were true.”

* * *

Almost a year to the day after he had left Hogwarts after being exposed as a fraud, Barty was back again, part of the recovery mission sent after Lucius’ milksop of a son to make sure he dispatched Dumbledore as he had been ordered to.

For once the Death Eaters were in agreement, almost anyone else would have been a better pick for this job. Even Bellatrix, for all her raving, could still pick up a wand and shoot.

She appeared for the first time while he was duelling with a livid, and embarrassingly shabby, Remus Lupin.

“Best hold that arm a bit higher Barty,” she scolded. “He’s _much better_ than you are.”

“I was good enough to kill you,” he muttered, and his words drowned out by the battle raging around them,

She grinned. “Yes, I suppose you were. What a pity not all of your opponents will be fifteen-year-old students taken by surprise.”

-/-/-/-

Later, once the fighting was all but over and they were planning their retreat, Barty saw her again. Hermione was standing with her head rested against one of the castle walls, or rather, hovering in front of it.

“I miss it,” she breathed out, and for a moment she sounded like she had when Barty had been posing as her teacher, _when she was alive_.

Barty took a step towards her before he could stop himself. As soon as the clip of his boot reverberated around the walls, the moment was broken. Hermione’s eyes shuttered over, and she regarded him cruelly again.

“At least I still have you, _Barty_. Run along now,” she said, shooing him with her arms. “Wouldn’t want to get left behind.”

“I’ll get rid of you,” he said darkly. “One way or another, I’ll send you packing.”

“Good luck with that.”

* * *

They toasted Dumbledore’s demise with Elf-made wine. Draco looked sick. As well he should.

“You continue to impress me,” his Lord had said to him, and for the first time, Barty faulted. He could hear her, mocking him. Her words danced around the room as clearly as the music that was playing in the background. She wasn’t even there, and he was beginning to imagine she was. He was fraying, the cords of his control were pinging as they separated, snap after crushing snap.

Barty simpered, but it wasn’t the same. His bow was mechanical, and his words were formulaic. His Lord regarded him for a long time before he sent him on his way, speaking to the next in line.

Barty released a breath and doubled his resolve. He _had_ to ignore her. His life may very well depend on it.

* * *

The inner-circle met more regularly once Dumbledore was gone. They knew it wouldn’t be long before they had the Ministry in their pocket. All the dominos were falling on time and in order. They were _winning_ ; there was no _need_ to hide.

-/-/-/-

Barty scowled behind his mask as Dolohov was praised for something he deemed trivial. He would have scoffed, but the breath was robbed from his lungs as _she_ stepped out from behind the crouching Russian and shook out her hair.

“Looks like he has a _new_ favourite,” she said with faux sweetness. “What will you do to gain his good graces now?

Barty palmed his wand. It was a reflex; he could no more have stopped his hand than he could have prevented himself from taking his next breath. She spotted it.

Hermione walked out from the middle of the circle, extending her limbs elegantly as if she was dancing. Her hand raised and rested next to his cheek.

“That won’t work on me Barty, you saw to that. Now be a _good boy_ and pay attention. Your circus is underway.”

* * *

After that first breach, Hermione was forever at the meetings, _polluting_ the very thing Barty held dearer than a religion with her _inferiority_.

“What would he say if he knew you were holding on to me?” she asked one night as he laid in bed and Barty threw the clock by his bedside at her. It clunked at her feet, and she looked down at it before looking back up and tsking at him like he was a badly behaved cat.

Barty hated himself for the show of weakness. He shouldn’t make it so _easy_ for her. He was better than that.

“Touched a nerve, did I?”

Barty turned over in bed and put his back to her.

* * *

It struck Barty as odd that though he had killed her, he had never seen Hermione _in pain_ , not until the Weasley wedding. Her death had been a nothing, a task to take care of to cause confusion and buy him some time. There had been no torture or begging for her life. So he had never known what to look for, until now.

When Barty arrived with the rest of the available Death Eaters, his mind was wholly taken up by the fighting, but it didn’t take him long for him to spot her.

Her dress wasn’t bloody anymore, it seemed she had given up that little trick some months before… but her now plain white dress stuck out even further in the chaos. At least to his eye.

Hermione was stood next to Harry Potter and his ever-faithful Ron Weasley as the boys whispered among themselves and backed out of the tent.

Hermione gazed after them with shining eyes and one of her arms raised, stretching as if to reach out and touch them. But then, her arm dropped and fell listlessly to her side.

She never bothered to find him before she vanished.

* * *

The Ministry fell, as they all knew it would and now they were holding all of the cards. Yet, Barty felt like he was losing his grip on the simplest things. Sleep continued to prove elusive, and he lost his appetite. He couldn’t seem to get a moment’s peace.

He just wanted to lose _himself_ , just for a moment.

When the others suggested a visit to a local brothel after an incredibly hard week, Barty surprised them by tagging along. It wasn’t an activity he engaged in often, but the adrenaline from the prolonged fight or flight he existed in with Hermione had been building in his joints. He needed release of some kind.

After a slow, hard, deliberate fuck that he felt all the way down to his toes, Barty collapsed next to his paid-for company and didn’t wake up till the next day.

Hermione appeared opposite him when Barty went to a cafe for breakfast and stole away his resolve in an instant.

“Do I want to know why you picked the one with brown, curly hair?” she asked innocently.

The mug in Barty’s hand shattered.

* * *

When Potter had gotten away after they ambushed the wedding, his Lord had been angry, but it was nothing to his fury when Dolohov and Rowle came back empty-handed. Barty was incredulous. _How had they managed to fuck up such a simple task?_

By the time their Lord was finished, they were writhing on the floor. There wasn’t an inch of them that wasn’t stained with blood.

Barty saw Hermione looking down from between two hooded figures on the other side of the silent circle. He had a fleeting thought that she should leave, that she shouldn’t see all this mess.

Hermione looked far from saddened, though. Her face remained neutral, but her eyes sparkled.

It was an expression Barty recognised.

* * *

Hermione appeared just like she always did, silently and without warning.

Barty was shaving in the mirror, using a cut-throat razor just like his father had taught him to. He supposed he could have used a spell, but it was a point of pride that he could still do this. No matter what he had injured, his hands were still steady enough.

She appeared as a reflection in the blade before he noticed her in the mirror. Barty thought that her image in the metal was more authentic. It was distorted, muted in colour and cut up by hard lines.

It was real. It was how he saw her.

* * *

Potter had been caught, and yet _somehow_ Lucius had let him slip through his manicured fingers. Hermione was jubilant, and in her joy, she followed him around for almost a whole hour, goading him and all but skipping with delight.

“We _will_ kill them, in the end. They’ll all be dead, just like you.”

Hermione’s head tilted to the side and her curls scattered. “Barty, do you ever wonder if I’m not _really_ here?” Barty stopped walking and focused on his breathing. “Do you wonder whether this is _all_ going on in your head?”

“Ghosts are _real_ ,” he forced out of his permanently gritted teeth.

“That they are, but, if that’s what I am, then why can no one else see me?”

* * *

Barty stood by the window as Yaxley handed out assignments, he didn’t have to pay too much attention, he’d already been pulled aside for a briefing earlier in the day.

Hermione was in the grounds, easily visible despite him peering out at her from a third-floor window.

She had positioned herself on a rustic looking swing that had been tied to an old tree and was carelessly swaying in the breeze. Every time she soared forward, her unnaturally pale limbs would cut through the air and then sweep under her when she glided backwards.

He’d always had the impression she _couldn’t_ touch things in the real world, and yet the swing was moving along with her. _Maybe it was another trick?_

She looked so real that Barty almost asked Severus if he could see her, but he didn’t. To reveal such a thing would have been foolish in the highest degree.

Barty was no fool.

* * *

Barty craned his neck to the side as he felt his face twist. _In out, in and out._ That was what he had to do, once he had regulated his breathing, he could slow his heartbeat, then he’d feel more in control. He’d been prone on the floor for the better part of an hour, and the pain still hadn’t abated enough to allow him to stand up and get onto the bed.

He knew from grim experience that the longer he stayed down, the worse it would be. Five more minutes, he told himself, five more minutes and then he would try again.

It was her feet that he saw first. Dainty bare toes that appeared right next to his face, almost wholly covered by the soft white of her full skirt.

“Go away,” he murmured. He didn’t have the energy to scold her like he usually did.

“I _could_ ,” Hermione mused thoughtfully. “But I don’t think you want me to.”

Her playful attitude cut like knives against his already raw skin. “I _don’t_ want you here,” he seethed, and she unceremoniously dropped to the floor, leaning forward and peering at him like he was an exhibit at the zoo.

“Stop, Barty,” she said, placing a hand on her chest and setting her face in an expression of mock anguish. “You’ll hurt my _feelings_.”

“Bitch,” Barty spat slowly, and Hermione fiddled with her fingers.

“Your father wanted to _watch_ ,” she divulged and grinned knowingly as his body stilled. “I came instead.”

Barty’s mind screamed at him not to react, not to give her any more power over him. But then, she must have already put so many things together to have mentioned it in the first place. “How does that even work?” he asked, and she shrugged.

“I don’t know all the rules.”

“I thought all you cared about were the rules.”

“And look where that got me,” she said and gestured to herself sitting on the floor next to his trembling body. Barty felt a wave of heat pulse through him again, starting at his temples and cascading down to his toes. He needed to move, to take some potions, and to rest. He was so tired.

“Another beating like this and I’m going to end up where you are,” he observed through gritted teeth as his head throbbed.

“Oh, Barty,” Hermione said, watching him with evident amusement. “We’re not going to end up in the same place.”

* * *

If there was one thing Barty loathed more than Hermione’s constant interjections into his otherwise quiet existence, it was the ceremony and pageantry that came along with his chosen path as a Death Eater. He was spending yet another Saturday, cooped up in a dark room listening to other people talk.

Draco Malfoy was giving a speech. It wasn’t very good. Barty didn’t think Malfoy’s heir had even managed to convince _himself_ of the words he was emotionlessly spewing, let alone the room at large. He was doing it with a wand at his back, so to speak, but it was no excuse.

There was a lot of this lately, preparing them for the ‘new dawn’ and the recruits that would come along with it. Barty didn’t much care. Having lived through a few waves of people joining he knew with some certainty, they would be just as useless as the last lot, and the lot before that.

When he was finally free from the overcrowded room, Hermione was waiting on the other side of the corridor, and she wordlessly fell into step beside him until he reached his room. Staying here was a nightmare, but there weren’t many viable alternatives, not yet at least. When they won, he could go wherever he wanted. For now…

“Poor boy,” Hermione said as she sat on the edge of his bed and Barty scoffed. He was sure Draco could never be considered _poor_ in any sense of the word.

“You don’t like him any more than I do.”

Hermione laid her head back and looked out of the window. “I wasn’t talking about him.”

* * *

There was a party, an impromptu one they were permitted to have after a job well done the day before. The drinks had been following consistently for an hour, and Barty knew it wouldn’t be too much longer before the fighting broke out. They just couldn’t help themselves. There was too much emotion, too much ill will, too much mania in one room to be contained forever.

Barty lingered in the shadows and sipped his drink, waiting for the girl in the white dress to appear and ruin his night.

She never came.

* * *

“What can I do,” Barty asked finally. His pride had ebbed away weeks before until there was nothing of it left. “How can I make it stop?”

Hermione regarded him from one of her favourite places, in his room, in his chair, by his low table. “Jump out of the window,” she replied dispassionately, and Barty seethed.

“I’m not fucking joking, Hermione.”

Her gaze was unflinching. “Neither am I.”

* * *

His Lord was angry, very, _very_ angry. Potter had broken into the bank and taken something, that much they all knew. The rest, well, whatever it was, it was not information likely to be shared.

“You know something,” he accused Hermione, late in the night when she appeared, sitting by the side of his bed.

“Only a little something,” she agreed with a smile and Barty, for the first time, wished he hadn’t killed her. He wished Hermione Granger was alive and well and whole enough for him to wrap his fingers around her throat.

“The tables are turning, Barty,” she said. “Better make sure you’re on the right side when the music stops.”

* * *

Barty looked across the Hogwarts grounds to where his Lord was lying, slumped over on the floor. Not a single noise could be heard in the vast open space around them. Even the birds had stopped squawking.

After all this time, his mind had finally cracked. He couldn’t process this. He remembered the girl falling to the floor just like that, disposable and redundant.

-/-/-/-

For a brief moment, there was nothing, and then there was chaos.

When it was clear that his Lord was not getting back up, the shouting started, then the battle began afresh, then the Auror’s began arriving.

Barty dispassionately watched them zoom and land. He would not go back there. He would not. Not now, not when he didn’t have any reason to keep ongoing.

“Barty?”

Hermione appeared, she had a dark coloured robe over her usual gown and no smile on her face. When he didn’t reply, she stood in front of him, craning her neck so she could look into his eyes.

“It’s time to go.”

-/-/-/-

Barty followed her out of the chaos and into the quiet of the castle. He ran his fingers over the gouges in the stone as he went, mindlessly putting one foot in front of the over.

Finally, she gestured to a door, and Barty opened it, not questioning why he was now following her command like a lost dog. He had never been a leader; there was something so endlessly comforting about following another, stronger person.

It was an empty classroom, one he initially barely recognised given the change of decor, but as he walked around, it all clicked into place. He knew where he was.

They were where it all began.

“Fitting, don’t you think?” Hermione said, and Barty shrugged, he supposed it was.

“Are you ready?”

“I think so,” he murmured as he sat down on one of the tables. He just didn’t care anymore. He regarded her, standing exactly where she had been that night, almost behind the door. She had never looked more real.

“Will you stay… until it’s done?”

“Yes, Barty, where else would I be?”

* * *

_My haunted lungs_  
_Ghost in the sheets  
_ _I know if I’m haunting you, you must be haunting me_


End file.
